Canadian Women’s Hockey League

Let’s talk about our Leading Lady of the Links…Rink Rat Scheifele in the Bow Wow Bungalow for dogging it…the Toronto Maple Blue Meanies…Ponytail Puck and gender bias…CFL is showing some leg…Hockey Night in Canada in tongues…Chucklehead Barkley…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and the Oscar for excellence in (computer) screen writing certainly doesn’t go to this blog…

We can all use a little good news these days and, thankfully, we have Brooke Henderson for that.

Brooke is the 20-dollar bill you find in the pocket of an old coat you haven’t worn for a year. She’s that unexpected job promotion that includes a corner office. She’s waking up early in the morning and realizing you can sleep in for another hour or two. Nothing but nice surprises.

The 23-year-old is also one of those special athletes who make you feel like you’re right there beside her as she puts the finishing brush strokes on another work of art and flashes that winning smile, which the 5-feet-4 mighty mite did in the final round of the LA Open at Wilshire Country Club in Los Angeles on Saturday.

Our Leading Lady of the Links took 67 swings to get the job done and nail down her 10th victory on the LPGA Tour, ending a win-free stretch dating back to June 2019.

The irony, of course, is that while the delightful native of Smiths Falls brought greater golf glory to a province ravaged by COVID-19, no one in Ontario is allowed to tee it up, meaning the next Brooke Henderson out there is on hold.

“I think golf is a great way to be outdoors and get some exercise, and it’s really unfortunate that they’re shut down right now,” Brooke told the Toronto Star. “Hopefully they’ll open up sooner than later. It’s a great way to, like I said, get exercise, fresh air and also have a little bit of social (interaction) by doing it pretty safely.”

That’s Brooke Henderson: A ray of sunshine in the gloom.

Do I smell a scandal brewing in Good Ol’ Hometown? Have feathers been ruffled? I mean, Rink Rat Scheifele spent some time in coach Paul Maurice’s pooch palace on Saturday night for, appropriately enough, dogging it. Coach PottyMo plunked Scheifele on the pine and kept the Winnipeg Jets’ leading point-collector in the Bow Wow Bungalow for 12 minutes and 53 seconds during the second period of the home side’s 4-1 smackdown by the Toronto Maple Leafs, and there’s no way to put a happy face on that. We await the fallout in these Doghouse Days of April.

Can anyone tell me exactly when those big, bad, blue meanies from the Republic of Tranna supposedly became a bunch of dirty, rotten no-goodniks who steal lunch money? I’ve never once thought of Zach Hyman as a dirty hockey player, even if he mistook Neal Pionk’s coconut for a pinata. Jumbo Joe Thornton and Nick Foligno? Sure, they’ve been known to play with an edge and take no prisoners. But Alex Galchenyuk? Come on, man. He’s as menacing as a kid with a pea shooter. But to hear it, the Leafs are Hells Angels on skates. There hasn’t been this much talk about T.O. toughness since Conn Smythe muttered something about beating ’em in the alley. But the Toronto Maple Blue Meanies they ain’t. The Jets and their faithful have to get over it and get on with it, even if it might mean elbows high.

When a sports scribe feels obliged to inform his readers that he isn’t a “homer” for fear they might view his essay on the home team getting beat up as homerism, chances are he’s a homer. Just saying.

Apparently, the best female hockey players on the Big Blue Orb aren’t allowed to have nice things anymore, like their best-on-best world tournament, scuttled (for now) by politicians unwilling to open the Nova Scotia border to visitors from hither and yon for fear they might have the deadly COVID-19 virus as a travelling companion.

So it’s deja vu all over again for the women, whose world showcase is now a once-cancelled (2020), twice-postponed (2021) event due to the killer pandemic.

Except, while they’re left holding the bag (or, in this case, unpacking their travel bags) and await word on new dates and/or locale, it’s business as usual for the boys/men operating under the International Ice Hockey Federation banner.

World Junior championship: Been there, done that in Edmonton.
U18 championship: Drop the puck in Frisco and Plano, Texas, on Monday.
World championship: Still good to go, May 21-June 6, in Riga, Latvia.

Looks like, walks like, talks like, smells like gender bias, no?

It’s understandable, therefore, that practitioners of Ponytail Puck are feeling like red-haired, freckle-faced stepchildren these days.

“Without pointing a finger and placing blame, because we can’t really compare our tournament location to any other tournament, every government has their own guidelines so I definitely want to make that clear, but I just feel like it’s very hard not to look at it from a gender standpoint because it seems like a little bit of a trend,” Team Canada forward Sarah Nurse told Donna Spencer of the Canadian Press.

“It’s hard not to look at it through that lens for sure.”

Well, Sarah might want to take another peek through “that lens,” or at least get out the Windex and give it a thorough cleaning.

First of all, Premier Iain Rankin is the scoundrel who pulled the plug on the world tournament, initially scheduled for April 7-17 then reworked for May 6-16 in Halifax and Truro, N.S., and there’s nothing to indicate he performed the dirty deed because most of the players tie their hair in ponytails.

Second, at last count the IIHF had cancelled 18 men’s events this year, that after scuttling the world championship and 14 other tournaments in 2020. Do the math: 33 men’s events chopped.

Thus, unless Sarah Nurse or anyone in Ponytail Puck can produce compelling and unassailable evidence to the contrary, this wasn’t a decision based on gender, even if some, like Kendall Coyne Scofield, choose to take that narrative and shout it from rooftops or bark about it on Twitter.

“Like so many of us, I’m tired of saying this…but even more exhausted from feeling it: Women’s hockey, once again, deserves more and better,” the U.S. national team captain huffed and puffed. “We deserve a World Championship before the end of this hockey season—it has been 739 days since the last.”

True.

And it’s been 700 days since the last men’s world, with no guarantee they’ll actually get on the ice in Latvia next month.

Coyne Schofield went on to scold the IIHF for not having a Plan B and immediately shuffle the women’s world to an alternate site, adding, “This response shows the lack of care that the IIHF had when it came to making sure the Women’s Worlds was successful like the other international hockey events we have so joyfully watched over the last year and will be watching very soon.”

One of Coyne Schofield’s American accomplices, Hilary Knight, provided the backup vocals, saying the postponement is “just another reminder that women’s hockey continues to be treated as an afterthought. Why is women’s hockey not afforded the same opportunity to compete within a bubble environment as the men? Why is our tournament expendable when others are not?”

Again, the biting disappointment is understandable, but making it a goose-and-gander squawk misses the mark.

So, repeat after me, kids: This women’s tournament was postponed not because it’s a women’s tournament, it was scuttled (for now) because Nova Scotia Premier Iain Rankin (right or wrong) believed it to be a grave health risk to his constituents.

It’s a COVID thing, not a she thing.

The Coyne Schofield harrumph brought Hailey Salvian of The Athletic into the fray with this take: “Kendall Coyne Schofield is the captain of Team USA and one of the best players in the women’s game, so her statement carries a ton of weight here. And it’s more than just the women’s worlds she is speaking about. It’s women’s hockey as a whole, which most players will tell you is consistently an afterthought. Look no further than the fact that the women’s hockey calendar since 2019 has almost entirely been wiped out at the professional and international level. And while the women sit at home, the men (for the most part) continue to play.” Hailey, who’s done some fabulous work on the Ponytail Puck file, ought to know better than to play the gender card. As for the women’s game being “almost entirely wiped out” since 2019, much of that is of their own authorship. The Canadian Women’s Hockey League shuttered its doors in spring of that year and, rather than link up with the National Women’s Hockey League and create a super league, the survivors went rogue to form the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association, choosing to participate in a series of hit-and-miss friendly matches (Dream Gap Tour) that are glorified scrimmages and largely ignored. Seldom on the ice, the non-professional PWHPA has expended much energy sniping at the NWHL because it won’t get out of the way. So, yes, it’s an absolute shame that the women’s world event has been put on hold, but it’s also a shame Ponytail Puck can’t get its house in order.

So, let me see if I’ve got this straight: Premier Rankin of Nova Scotia pulls the plug on the women’s world showcase at the 11th hour because of COVID-19, a decision that led the rank-and-file of the PWHPA, also their friends in the media, to raise a skunk-level stink with direct accusations of gender bias against the IIHF. But wait. Correct me if I’m wrong (I’m not), but didn’t the PWHPA postpone its very own scheduled showcase in St. Louis earlier this month? At the 11th hour? By gosh, they sure did. Why? COVID-19. What, no Plan B? They couldn’t move it to another locale on a moment’s notice? No and no. But they say they’ll reschedule the event. You know, just like the IIHF. Funny how that works.

This from Tara Slone of Sportsnet in a natter with Canadian national team forward Natalie Spooner: “We have to talk about the PWHPA. The Dream Gap Tour has been, you know, pretty full swing south of the border…” Okay, I get it. Slone is a PWHPA groupie. She’ll never toss a tough question at Spooner or any of the Dream Gappers. It’s forever fluff. But does she have to lie to us? I mean, to say the Dream Gap Tour is in “full swing” is to say six Hearts and five Clubs is a full deck of cards. They’ve completed two stops this year, in Gotham and Chicago, and a third stop in St. Louis was postponed with no makeup date set. Total friendlies played 115 days into 2021: 4. I’m reasonably certain that Slone knows four skirmishes in 115 days is not “full swing.” For all the good work Sportsnet does on the female athletes file, it’s puzzling why they allow Slone and others to pander to the PWHPA rather than engage in meaningful and truthful dialogue about big-picture Ponytail Puck.

At the recent Canadian Football League global draft, 11 kickers/punters were selected by the nine teams, including four in the first round. There hasn’t been that much interest in legs since Betty Grable became every American GI’s favorite pinup girl during WWII.

For the youngsters in the audience, Betty Grable was an actor, singer, dancer and model, and the Gable gams once were insured for $1 million, which translates into $14.6 million today.

On the subject of body parts, Hockey Night in Canada was broadcast/streamed in 10 different tongues on Saturday night. It would have been 11 different languages, except Don Cherry was fired a year and a half ago.

The owner of Linnie’s Pub in Cincinnati is refusing to show National Basketball Association games until LeBron James is “expelled” from the league. “They just need to play the game and that’s it,” Jay Linneman says. “Their opinion doesn’t really matter. They’re using their position to push their opinion, and that’s just not right.” Number of night’s sleep King James has lost because of Linneman’s protest: Zero.

Sometimes Charles Barkley makes me laugh. Other times he makes me cringe. Last week, for example, he used his Inside the NBA on TNT pulpit for misogyny disguised as frat boy humor. “Georgia the only school in the world they named their mascot after the women down there,” Barkley said. The University of Georgia mascot, if you didn’t know, is a bulldog, and Uga X is no one’s notion of pretty. Sadly, it wasn’t the first time Sir Chucklehead has used women as fodder to feed his funny bone. Like his take on the female citizenry of San Antonio. “Some big ol’ women down there … that’s a gold mine for Weight Watchers,” he said. “Victoria is definitely a secret (in San Antonio)…they can’t wear no Victoria’s Secret down there. They wear big, ol’ bloomers down there. They ain’t wearin’ no…ain’t nothin’ skimpy down in San Antonio.” Yo, Chuck. It’s the 21st century calling.

It’s about that now-you-see-us, now-you-don’t bully gambit by European soccer power brokers hoping to form a breakaway Super League: I’m not saying the venture was short-lived, but I’ve taken pee breaks that lasted longer.

Loud shoutout to Pat O’Neill, equipment manager of the Vancouver Canucks who reached the 3,000-game milestone last week. You might not know this, but Patty got his start sharpening skates, washing jocks and serving as a sounding board for the quirky, the demanding and the pampered of the NHL in Good Ol’ Hometown with the Jets in the 1980s. As I recall, he usually had a friendly greeting for us pesky scribes when we would invade the inner sanctum, which automatically qualifies him one of the good guys.

Another loud shoutout to Jeff Hamilton of the Drab Slab. His six-part series about the shattered lives left behind by sexual predator Graham James has been shortlisted for two national journalism awards. A Stain On Our Game was fabulous work, even if much of the content was grim reading.

The Winnipeg Sun last Wednesday: 2 sports pages, 2 sports stories, both on the Jets. That’s rock bottom and, as a Sun sports alum, it truly saddens me.

On the same day, this was the page count for Postmedia sports sections (tabloid) across the tundra:

Vancouver Province 15
Toronto Sun 12
Ottawa Sun 8
Edmonton Sun 8
Calgary Sun 7
Winnipeg Sun 2

Talk about your red-headed, freckle-faced stepchild. Five papers get to sit at the big table with the grownups while the Winnipeg Sun is stuck in another room at the kiddies’ table with the nieces, nephews and cousins they scarcely know.

And, finally, Conservative MP Tamara Jansen of Cloverdale-Langley City in B.C. believes “lesbian activity” can be cured with conversion therapy. Well, I plan a full schedule of “lesbian activity” today. You know, make breakfast, watch a movie or two, check/send some emails, maybe step outside for a walk around the block or go for a pint at my local watering hole, make dinner, watch a bit of the Oscars, go to bed. I wonder if all the straight people know there’s a cure for all the “lesbian activity” they engage in during the day.

Let’s talk about the yin and yang of Ponytail Puck…English soccer women hit the mother lode…local treasure Jennifer Botterill…Mike Tyson’s meal ticket…the CFL arms race…Chevy and the Arctic ice melt…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and the days are getting longer and so is this blog…

A “shambles.”

That’s the word Kendall Coyne Schofield used to describe the state of women’s hockey in 2019, and it was a harsh truth.

The mostly ignored Canadian Women’s Hockey League had shuttered its doors permanently, giving rise to a group of malcontents demanding, among other things, a living wage, preferably from billionaire owners in the National Hockey League. Rather than sign on with National Women’s Hockey League outfits and form one super league, 150-200 orphaned players chose to participate in mostly ignored pickup games hither and yon, pose for photos with Billie Jean King, and trash talk the NWHL, which was wrestling with its own credibility demons in its fifth season.

“The women’s professional game is in shambles,” Coyne Schofield, the brightest star in the female shinny galaxy, told the San Francisco Chronicle in December 2019. “I dream of the day a young girl can dream of one day being a professional hockey player, and we’re nowhere near that.”

So, fast forward 15 months, and it’s fair to wonder if that dream is any nearer. Is Ponytail Puck any less in shambles?

Well, let’s take inventory:

The NWHL emerged from its COVID cocoon in January and assembled in Lake Placid for a two-week frolic meant to determine an Isobel Cup winner. Alas, the pandemic put the kibosh on that. The semifinals and final were aborted, but the NWHL returned to the freeze to complete its unfinished business on Friday and Saturday in Boston, declaring the Boston Pride as champions, and all three skirmishes were broadcast live on NBCSN.

Coyne Schofield and friends in the PWHPA, meanwhile, cranked up their second Dream Gap Tour last month, first strutting their stuff in a true sporting cathedral, Madison Square Garden in Gotham, then shifting their barnstorming showcase to the United Center in Chicago. Both friendlies were broadcast live on NBCSN, a first in the United States.

Finally, there’s loud chatter about the NWHL adding a seventh franchise, in Montreal, for its seventh season, and the planet’s elite are scheduled to gather in Nova Scotia for the 20th Women’s World Championship, May 6-16, and TSN will be all-in for the global showcase.

Thus, it sounds like the women are gaining traction. Or not.

As much as the national TV exposure is boffo, certain among the Dream Gappers can’t resist the urge to slag the NWHL, indicating that Ponytail Puck is as much a house divided as in late December 2019, when Coyne Schofield talked about an enterprise “in shambles.”

“I don’t think you’ll get the PWHPA and the NWHL together,” Cassie Campbell-Pascall informed Tim Micallef early this month on Sportsnet’s Tim & Friends.

The former Canadian Olympian and current Sportsnet squawk box suggested it would be “awesome” if the NWHL survives, and that it might one day be “a great league,” or grow up and become “a feeder system” to a Women’s NHL featuring Dream Gappers. But it’s “not the future of women’s hockey,” she harrumphed. So there.

“I think the PWHPA is gonna go down as that moment in women’s hockey, that group in women’s hockey, that really, truly made a difference in providing a professional women’s hockey league,” Campbell-Pascall tooted. So there again.

It should be pointed out that Campbell-Pascall is not a member of the PWHPA board. Nor is she an official adviser. But she’s thrown in fully with the Dream Gappers, and Sportsnet continues to provide a pulpit for her unchallenged propaganda. She uses her position for divisive dialogue, sometimes spewing inaccuracies about the NWHL, other times accusing former NWHL commissioner and founder Dani Rylan Kearney of “ulterior motives” without naming her and without introducing evidence.

Others among the Dream Gappers have shown an inclination toward schoolyard banter. Hilary Knight branded the NWHL a “glorified beer league” and former board member Liz Knox tsk-tsked the NWHL for having the (apparent) bad manners to add an expansion team during a sports-wide pandemic shutdown, even as every other jock operation was plotting strategy for a return to the playing fields.

“There is a lot of history there that is uncomfortable,” Tyler Tumminia acknowledged in a natter with Jeff Marek and Elliotte Friedman on their 31 Thoughts podcast three weeks ago.

Tumminia became a fresh voice in the discussion after stepping forward as interim NWHL commissioner last October. She earned her executive chops in the boardrooms of baseball (she’s named after Ty Cobb), and she’s attempting to apply lessons learned to Ponytail Puck. Not just the NWHL, understand. The big picture. Which explains her sweet tweet saluting the PWHPA for its landmark appearance at Madison Square Garden on Feb. 28.

“To me, (the tweet) was saying, ‘I value and I see you and I applaud what you guys are doing for the women’s game, for women’s hockey in particular.’” she said. “I shouldn’t be commissioner of a women’s hockey league if I didn’t applaud that. I’m not dismissing the fact that there’s some raw emotions around it. What I’m saying, is that, you know, some of that narrative is actually outdated now, so let’s sit at the table and have a true sense of what is actually going on here and how we can get to where everybody wants to get to. We all want to get to the same spot. So how can we get together. But, ya, I think that there needs to be some therapeutic conversation, and I’m open to that of course. Now, I don’t have much history there, but I’m open to having those conversations of what had happened but, mostly, what can we do going forward.”

The difference in tone between Tumminia and Campbell-Pascall is startling. One is reaching out with an olive branch, the other is swinging a wrecking ball.

Their views on the direction of Ponytail Puck are just as conflicting.

Here’s Campbell-Pascall: “I think the next step is an announcement, the NHL to step up and make an announcement. ‘This is what we’re gonna do, here’s how we’re gonna do it, and this is when we’re gonna do it.’ That’s the only logical step and the only thing in my opinion that makes sense. Ya, I’m putting pressure on the NHL, because I’ve sat in meetings and worked with them for a long time and talked and discussed this for a long time, and it is time. They know it’s time. They have the infrastructure. Obviously COVID has hit the league hard and they’re losing money as well. Obviously timing is not ideal, but the time is now. The time is now for them to step up and make an announcement about how they want to support women’s hockey.”

And now Tumminia: “I think it’s kinda unfair on the NHL’s part for me to say, ‘Hey, they should take it on themselves and, you know, help this all out.’ Meaning, we’re in the middle of a pandemic, everybody’s hurting financially. For them to take on the entire business model, I don’t know. I think that would be a little unfair at this time to ask them to do that. That’s a little bit tough to ask at this point. Now, in a couple years that might be a little bit different. Right now what I think it should look like, is you get a business model that’s strong in a league that goes past a couple of years, in combination with other parties involved and kinda go in the direction where it’s sustainable on its own. And at the time there’s market share, there’s viewership and there’s tribal fandom in these markets, and the markets are actually showing there’s growth and it’s sustainable and it’s fueling and funding revenue streams that are consistent. Then I think at that time, you know, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s something they take on.”

We can only speculate what’s ahead for Ponytail Puck, but I submit the cause can use a lot less of Campbell-Pascall’s militant mutterings and a lot more of Tumminia’s reasoned rhetoric.

Let’s put it another way: I know which of the two women I’d choose to represent me in a boardroom. (Hint: It isn’t the one making demands of NHL owners who aren’t fishing for fresh ways to squander money.)

Here’s a reason the NWHL and PWHPA need to get their crap together: The English Women’s Super League just hit the mother lode, signing a three-year TV deal with BBC and Sky Sports. Total value: 24 million English pounds, which translates into $33M in U.S. greenbacks. The BBC will show 22 matches and there’ll be as many as 44 more on Sky. Our practitioners of Ponytail Puck will drool at those numbers. That’s where they want to be, visible and with substantial TV revenue. And if it’s doable in English soccer it ought to be doable for shinny in North America, especially in Canada. How do they arrive at that point? Simple: Follow Tumminia’s lead. Sit down and talk. Hash out differences. Clear up misconceptions. Grab an oar and row in the same direction. Campbell-Pascall has said more than once that “this isn’t about one league versus the other league,” but that’s exactly what the Dream Gappers have done to Ponytail Puck. They’ve turned it into a family feud. Now they have a chance to grab an olive branch. We’ll see.

Every time I see and hear Jennifer Botterill talk hockey on Sportsnet, I’m reminded what a local treasure she is and how the decision-makers got it right in making her the first female player inducted to the Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame. One of the all-timers in local shinny lore, Jennifer is an Olympic champion, world champion, two-time winner of the Patty Kazmaier Award as the top player in NCAA women’s hockey, team captain at Harvard, CWHL scoring champion, CWHL all-star, and now a respected voice on hockey TV. It’s just too bad Jennifer had to leave home to do all that heavy lifting. Wouldn’t it have been nice if the final notation on her career read: Played professional hockey in Winnipeg?

Having said that, I wonder if the Puck Pontiff, Mark Chipman, harbors an appetite for bringing a women’s team under the True North umbrella. Has anyone asked the Winnipeg Jets co-bankroll about it? If not, why not?

This is an example of what Ponytail Puck is up against in terms of coverage in mainstream media: The Toronto Six met the Boston Pride in an Isobel Cup semifinal skirmish on Friday. Number of column inches devoted to the match in the Toronto Sun pre- and post-game, zero. But, hey, they managed to squeeze in a full-page Sunshine Girl. Meanwhile, both TSN and Sportsnet used the Boston-Minnesota Whitecaps championship joust as bottom-feeder filler on their highlight shows Saturday night/Sunday morning. The Isobel Cup final was a 52nd-minute afterthought on SportsCentre and a 47th-minute snippet on Sports Central, scant seconds in front of two NASCAR mud-racing pickup trucks.

Mike Tyson takes a chomp out of the champ’s right ear.

I note that cannibal boxer Mike Tyson, who once ate Evander Holyfield’s right ear for a late-night snack, won’t be fighting his former foe for a third time, thus losing out on a multi-million-dollar payday. Guess that means Iron Mike will have to find himself a new meal ticket.

Apparently negotiations between the greybeard boxers broke down when Tyson scared off Holyfield by arriving at one bargaining session with a knife and fork.

Here’s a transcript from the final Tyson-Holyfield verbal to-and-fro:
Tyson: “We have an offer you can’t refuse, Evander.”
Holyfield: “Talk to me, Mike…I’m all ears.”
Tyson: “No you’re not.”

There was also a hangup over the marketing slogan for the proposed Tyson-Holyfield III at Hard Rock Stadium. The two sides agreed it should be something catchy like Rumble in the Jungle or Thrilla in Manila, but Holyfield balked when the Tyson camp insisted on Finger Lickin’ Fightin’ ‘n’ Late Night Munchies In Miami.

The Winnipeg Jets lost Jacob Trouba, Tyler Myers and Ben Chiarot from their blueline in June/July 2019. Dustin Byfuglien disappeared in September that year. So we started discussing the pressing need for a top-four defenceman 18½ months ago. Question is, why are we still talking about it a year and a half after Big Buff and the boys bailed? What, general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff hasn’t noticed those four guys are missing? Of course he has. Yet we still await his next move. It’s official then: Chevy actually moves slower than the Arctic ice melt.

According to the 2021 World Happiness report, Finnish people are the happiest on the planet for the fourth straight year. Hmmm. Did anyone think to ask Patrik Laine about that?

There’s a large cargo ship stuck in the Suez Canal and, after a week of failed attempts to free the vessel, the captain and crew are desperate to get out. You know, just like anyone who plays for the Buffalo Sabres.

Seems to me that the Ottawa Senators might become an NHL force once all their players are old enough to shave. Then, of course, Eugene Melnyk will sell them off like used tupperware containers at a yard sale.

Go figure the Canadian Football League. One week commissioner Randy Ambrosie is talking tall about a budding bromance with Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson and his XFL, and the next week he’s pleading poverty (yes, again) and asking players to take an across-the-board hit at the pay window (yes, again). So let’s no longer wonder why Commish Randy and the Lords of Rouge Football would consider an iffy alliance with a fly-by operation south of the 49th, let’s instead wonder why The Rock would consider a partnership with a bunch of guys whose sole game plan appears to be begging. I don’t know if Commish Randy and his bosses are embarrassed, but they should be.

The CFL has become an arms race, and it has nothing to do with quarterbacks. It’s all about how many needles medics can poke into fans’ arms. Rouge Football isn’t doable without patrons in the pews, so what’s the over/under on the number of COVID-19 vaccine shots required before the faithful can flock into ball yards hither and yon? Is it 20 million? Twenty-five mill? Is Vegas offering odds?

And, finally, the other day I watched a replay of Secretariat’s gallop in the 1973 Belmont Stakes, and I must report that it remains the most gob-smacking, astonishing individual athletic performance I’ve ever witnessed. And that’s taking in a lot of turf, because I started watching sports in the mid-1950s. I suppose some folks might get emotional gazing upon the Mona Lisa or the Shroud of Turin, but I get teary-eyed watching Big Red romp to the wire in the Belmont. It’s very spiritual.

Let’s talk about the sexism gene in sports coverage…Sarah Fuller getting her kicks…the Drab Slab and moth balls…bravo Dugie…fabulous Friesen and his Bombers epic…fiftysomething fossils fighting, plus Big Angie and Peanut Butter Joe…our greatest Olympians…and other things on my mind

A Monday morning smorgas-bored…and adios to November and let those sleighbells ring…

I have sometimes wondered if sports editors and scribes consciously ignore female sports, or if it’s simply because they’re wired that way.

You know, like it’s a sexism gene that carries a built-in bias.

I mean, because it’s scientifically accepted that male athletes are bigger, stronger and faster—as are the major pro sports leagues—it seems to me that there’s an automatic reflex to play a guys’ story at the front of the sports section and relegate the women’s article to the back pages, if not spike the thing.

Consider hockey as a prime e.g.

The Canadian Women’s Hockey League was ignored out of business. There was scant game-day, or off-day coverage, in print or on air. Only when the CWHL turned out the lights did mainstream media sit up and take notice. Basically, they attended a total stranger’s funeral and gasped, “Oh, what a shame.”

When the Toronto Six of the National Women’s Hockey League anointed Digit Murphy head coach, it was like a tree falling in the forest. No one there to hear it? Guess it didn’t happen.

When the NWHL outlined its blueprint for a 2021 crusade last week, trumpeting a six-team tournament Jan. 23-Feb. 5 in a Lake Placid, N.Y., fan-free bubble, it was a three-paragraph brief on the last page of a 12-page sports section in the Toronto Sun. I found no mention of it on the Toronto Star website. That, even though there’s a franchise in the Republic of Tranna.

When was the last time we read anything about the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association and its Dream Gap Tour?

Let’s face it, unless it’s Canada v. U.S.A., Ponytail Puck is an afterthought in mainstream media. Why is that? Is it because the decision-makers know the finest female players in the world strain mightily to beat teenage boys at the Midget AAA or prep school level? And since they don’t cover Midget AAA or prep school level shinny, the women don’t warrant coverage either? Or is it the sexism gene?

Whatever the case, if Canadian newspapers aren’t prepared to write about the best female shinny players on the planet, what hope is there for other sports?

Oh, sure, female Olympic athletes are granted their due every two years, but none of the boys on the beat cover rhythmic gymnastics or synchronized swimming by choice. They hold their noses and do so because it’s a small, inconvenient price to pay for an all-expenses-paid trip to Greece or Tokyo or London or Rio.

Olympic Games aside, it’s almost as if a female athlete or women’s event must include a circus side-show element to attract serious attention.

We’ve seen plenty of the novelty acts, like the Kendall Coyne Schofield skedaddle and the 3-on-3 game during National Hockey League all-star hijinks, and Phil Esposito using Manon Rheaume as a publicity stunt in goal. And, of course, most recently we watched Sarah Fuller become the first female to participate in an NCAA Power 5 football game on Saturday.

It was as if Sarah had discovered a fool-proof vaccine for COVID-19, the way folks carried on, but she didn’t actually do anything other than breathe, unless one considers a 30-yard pooch kickoff and walking off the field without touching a foe a remarkable athletic accomplishment. But, hey, there were 21 male football players on the field and one female soccer player, so her presence certainly warranted ink and air time, and Sarah received more of each than any female footy player in a non-World Cup or Olympic year. Eat your heart out, Megan Rapinoe.

But, sans the carnival-barker component, mainstream media doesn’t seem interested, and it’s a sticking point they struggle to get past.

Early last month, SE Steve Lyons of the Winnipeg Free Press wrote about “being as equitable as possible” in terms of female/male coverage. So how is he doing since then?

Let’s just say that, to date, he talks a good game, but doesn’t deliver.

His Freep published 30 times in November. Copy/pics strictly about female athletes were featured on the front page of the section just five times—curler Kerri Einarson, retired volleyball player Tammy Mahon, WNBA, a pic of Kim Ng (the story was on the inside pages), and an Andrea Katz column. Total stories/briefs devoted to women in 30 days: 13/7.

That’s equitable like an Archie comic is deep reading material.

Over at the Winnipeg Sun, the picture is much more bleak. Females (curlers) found their way to the sports front once—repeat, once—in 29 editions. Total stories/briefs devoted to women: 9/1.

Pick up a daily newspaper—any newspaper—across our vast land and it’s the same.

Lyons has taken a step toward correcting the imbalance of sports coverage in the Drab Slab, bringing Katz on board to focus on the distaff side of the playground, and she made her first appearance on Saturday. The actual column failed to tell us anything many of us didn’t already know, but one assumes (hopes) it will become more informative and shine a light on our fabulous female athletes.

Credit to Lyons. It’s a starting point, which is a whole lot more than I can say for the lord and masters at Postmedia.

Here’s a prime example of the sexism gene at play: On Nov. 20, the Drab Slab ran golf stories on Tiger Woods and his son Charlie, the RSM Classic in Georgia and a brief on the Joburg Classic in Johannesburg. Meanwhile, there wasn’t a single word on the LPGA event that featured Canadians Brooke Henderson and Alena Sharp. Two days later, there was a full story on each of the men’s tournaments, while the Pelican Women’s Championship was a sports brief.

Initial reaction to Sarah Fuller suiting up to handle kicking chores for Vanderbilt on Saturday: Seriously? Vanderbilt has a football team?

As much as Sarah’s participation in a major men’s college football game was newsworthy and hailed as a significant moment, many on social media dismissed the occasion as Tom-foolery and at least one prominent American jock journo, Jason Whitlock of Outkick the Coverage, gave it a long, hard crapping-on. “I don’t believe she played football,” wrote Whitlock, who’s scribbled for the Kansas City Star, ESPN and Fox Sports, among others. “She scored a point in the culture war. The people who believe the only difference between men and women is in how they choose to identify consider Fuller a poor woman’s Jackie Robinson. She broke big time football’s gender barrier. But did she? Sarah Fuller received a standing ovation for kicking the ball 30 yards or so and high-tailing it to the sidelines to be greeted by the winless head coach using her to save his job. This wasn’t Jackie Robinson 2.0. It was Make A Wish. Treating Sara Fuller like she’s a special-needs kid does not uplift the cause of equality.” Harsh, but not entirely inaccurate.

By the way, if you’re wondering why Vanderbilt recruited Sarah’s right leg rather than someone from the school’s men’s soccer side, there is no men’s soccer side. It was shut down in 2006.

It was a bit of the old, a bit of the new for the Drab Slab last week, with SE Lyons pulling his buddy and former columnist Paul Wiecek out of moth balls and introducing Katz on the same day. Nothing wrong with bringing Wiecek back for a cameo appearance. The guy can write. And he actually managed to scribble an entire essay without taking a cheap shot at Jacob Trouba, so I guess he’s mellowed since walking away from the columnist gig a couple of years ago.

Fabulous series from Paul Friesen of the Sun on the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ journey to their 2019 Grey Cup win. It was a very readable, insightful, nine-part epic, even if there was no rhyme nor reason to the way the geniuses at Postmedia handled it. I believe they published Part One at the start of the pandemic and delivered the final installment this past Friday. Seriously, it took less time to film all the Rocky and Godfather movies combined. In reality, the Friesen series began on Oct. 9 and concluded on Nov. 27, and we had to guess on which days it would appear. Sometimes it was one day between installments, other times it was eight or nine days. Shabby. But oh so Postmedia.

A huge tip of the bonnet to home boy Don Duguid, one of my favorite people. The former world curling champ and longtime gab guy for the People’s Network has been appointed to the Order of Canada, and I trust that meets with everyone’s approval.

Just wondering, when the Winnipeg Jets brought Dave Lowry on board last week, did they hire their next head coach at the same time?

I saw highlights (if you want to call it that) of Charles Barkley playing golf the other day, and I’m lost to find an accurate description for Sir Charles’ swing. But a milking cow trying to climb a tree comes to mind.

Mike Tyson informed news snoops that he smoked a joint or two prior to his fiftysomethings fist-fight v. Roy Jones Jr. on Saturday night. It’s also been reported and confirmed that anyone who actually paid to watch the two boxing fossils fight was also on drugs.

Loved this tweet from Rob Vanstone of the Regina Leader-Post on the Tyson-Jones Jr. tiff: “This fight will be scored by using the 10-point rust system.”

I didn’t watch Tyson-Jones Jr., but you’ll never convince me that it was a more entertaining old geezer dust-up than Joe Kapp v. Angelo Mosca, two Canadian Football League legends who’ve never exchanged Christmas cards. If you missed it, Peanut Butter Joe offered Big Angie a flower; Big Angie told him to “stick it up your ass.” Big Angie attempted to cocobonk Peanut Butter Joe with his metal cane; Peanut Butter Joe lashed out with a right fist to the jaw. Down goes Big Angie! Down goes Big Angie! A Grey Cup week classic.

December arrives on the morrow, so I grant permission to one and all to begin playing Christmas tunes.

This from Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna: Former lickety-split champion of the track, Donovan Bailey, is “Canada’s greatest modern Olympian.” Really? Let me count the ways Bailey, a two-time gold medalist, falls short:

Clara Hughes: Only Olympian in history to win multiple medals in both the Summer and Winter Games—1 gold, 1 silver, 4 bronze.
Cindy Klassen: Six medals—1 gold, 1 silver, 3 bronze.
Hayley Wickenheiser, Jayna Hefford: Five medals—4 gold, 1 silver.
Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir: Five medals—3 gold, 2 silver.
Charles Hamelin: Five medals— 3 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze.
Marc Gagnon: Five medals—3 gold, 2 bronze.
Francois-Louis Tremblay: Five medals—2 gold, 2 silver, 1 bronze.
Lesley Thompson: Five medals—1 gold, 3 silver, 1 bronze.
Caroline Ouillette: Four medals—4 gold.
Jennifer Botterill, Becky Kellar, Meghan Agosta: Four medals—3 gold, 1 silver.
Kathleen Heddle, Marnie McBean: Four medals—3 gold, bronze.
Gaetan Boucher: Four medals—2 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze.
Eric Bedard: Four medals—2 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze.
Victor Davis: Four medals—1 gold, 3 silver.
Denny Morrison: Four medals—1 gold, 2 silver, 1 bronze.
Adam van Koeverden: Four medals—1 gold, 2 silver, 1 bronze.
Penny Oleksiak: Four medals—1 gold, 1 silver, 2 bronze
Kim St-Pierre, Cherie Piper, Colleen Sostorics, Gillian Apps, Charline Labonte: Three medals—3 gold.
Danielle Goyette: Three medals—2 gold, 1 silver.
Carolyn Waldo: Three medals—2 gold, 1 silver.
Rosie MacLennan: Two medals—2 gold.

Either Simmons doesn’t consider any of the above to be “modern” Olympians, or he can’t count.

Why the Winnipeg Sun continues to run Simmons’ Tranna-centric copy is an ongoing mystery, and it continues to get up my nose. In his most recent alphabet fart, he prattled on about attendance at Blue Jays games, the Maple Leafs payroll, Auston Matthews, Blue Jays play-by-play guy Mike Wilner, the Blue Jays pursuit of free agents, Terence Davis of the Tranna Jurassics, Masai Ujiri and Bobby Webster contract situations with the Jurassics, the Toronto FC payroll, sports gambling in Ontario, Serge Ibaka leaving the Jurassics, a new ballpark for the Republic of Tranna, and the Argos losing the 1971 Grey Cup game. This is what Postmedia believes people in Good Ol’ Hometown want to read on a Sunday morning? The Winnironto Sun? Spare me.

And, finally, the RCR has topped the 50,000 mark in views for the year, which is my cue to retreat for a spell. I shall return Christmas week and not a day sooner. Unless, of course, stupid happens before Santa touches down. In the meantime, thanks for dropping by.

Let’s talk about the silence of the Puck Pontiff…Barry Shenkarow didn’t hide…big bucks in the blurt box…Fake It Like Beckham…that ain’t chicken feed those pigeons are fetching…fiddle farting around on the snooker table…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday morning smorgas-bored…and you are not required to wear a mask to read this blog…

Is it just me, or does anyone else wonder what’s rattling around in the grey matter between Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman’s ears these days?

I mean, with the National Hockey League ensnared in a state of iffiness re a 2021 crusade, and the players royally PO’d due to a proposed wave of wage rollbacks (again), wouldn’t you like to know what the Winnipeg Jets co-bankroll thinks about the current state of affairs?

Wouldn’t you like to hear his thoughts on the local shinny side playing in an empty Little Hockey House On The Prairie this winter?

Wouldn’t you like to know if he’d prefer to scrap a 2021 season rather than lose a small fortune paying six- and seven-figure salaries with no game-day revenue?

Wouldn’t you like to hear the Puck Pontiff’s take on the NHL owners’ ploy to renege on the agreement they willingly signed with the work force just this past summer?

Wouldn’t you like to know how he feels about the Jets frolicking in an all-Canadian division?

Wouldn’t you like to hear some assurance that, COVID-19 be damned, the Jets are here for the long haul, even as the pandemic gnaws away at his bottom line like termites on a two-by-four?

I know I would.

I won’t hold my breath, though, because the Puck Pontiff is not a man given to disclosure. He’s more guarded with his thoughts than a Rottweiler growling at the gates of a junkyard. The Kremlin was less secretive during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

But that’s his right, of course.

Chipman heads up a private company, True North Sports + Entertainment, so he isn’t obliged to make us privy to any secrets, dirty or otherwise. Except for one thing: There’s ample and rabid outside interest in the centrepiece of his fiefdom, that being an NHL franchise that pigs out at the public trough. The faithful flock to his Little Hockey House On The Prairie a minimum of 41 nights every year, give or take a pandemic, and many thousands of them also spend many thousands of dollars on Jets merchandise. Others purchase TV cable and/or Internet streaming packages to watch their hockey heroes as they fight the good fight hither and yon.

I’d say that warrants a word or two from the guy who signs the cheques, wouldn’t you?

Geoff Molson, the beer baron bankroll of the storied Montreal Canadiens, thought so, which is why he sat down for a natter with Herb Zurkowsky of the Montreal Gazette recently.

Among other things, Molson pooh-poohed any notion of a lost season, no matter how harsh the financial wallop, and he expressed a hope that there would be patrons in the pews before the close of business on a runted season.

“I really do think it’s the right thing to play,” he said. “I think we can get there. The thought of making a profit this year isn’t even in my mindset. It’s more about returning to play.”

Why can’t the Puck Pontiff poke his head out of the ivory tower and do the same?

Again, he’s under no obligation to address the faithful, but the right to remain silent is a good policy if you’re sitting in the back seat of a police cruiser, not when you’re at the wheel of an NHL franchise in the heartland of Canada.

I’d like to think that one or more of the girls and boys on the beat have requested an audience with His Royal Hockeyness during these most uncertain of times. If not, shame on them. If so (and I suspect that’s the case), shame on him and his hangups. Not so long ago, Mad Mike McIntyre of the Drab Slab confessed that he’s never engaged in a verbal parry-and-thrust with the Puck Pontiff. Not in four years on the beat, but not for lack of effort. Mad Mike assured us he has put in a bid to tap the Puck Pontiff’s brain pan more than once, only to be rejected each time. And that’s just wrong.

Back in the day, Benny Hatskin or Michael Gobuty or Barry Shenkarow were usually just a phone call away, and we were never required to genuflect and kiss their ring fingers before they agreed to talk to us. We had their home phone numbers, for cripes sake, and they knew where to find us. Did Shenkarow enjoy standing or sitting in front of the media mob, painting a gloom-and-doom scenario for the Jets 1.0 franchise? No. He didn’t. I can tell you there was always pain in his voice, sadness in his eyes and a great burden on his slender shoulders whenever he spoke. At times there was also anger. And extreme frustration. But he became the front man for the ownership group and accepted that his voice needed to be heard, even when there was nothing but sad tidings to deliver. Many among the rabble made Barry out to be the bad guy when it became apparent that the NHL couldn’t work in Good Ol’ Hometown in the 1990s, but no one could accuse him of hiding.

It occurs to me that if there’s one thing the rabble dislikes more than jock journos complaining about lousy press box food, tight deadlines and uppity athletes, it’s millionaire jocks and billionaire owners bickering over big bucks. That doesn’t play well at the best of times, so it’s particularly irksome during a global pandemic that’s forcing people out of work, out of homes and sending them to food banks. I mean, if NHL bankrolls get their way in the latest squabble with the NHL Players Association, Kyle Connor of the Jets won’t collect his $8 million salary for a 2021 crusade. He’ll have to get by on $4.4 million in U.S. coin. At the lower end of the pay scale, Jansen Harkins will have to make due on $385,000 instead of $700,000. I agree, boo-freaking-hoo. Hey, I’m all for the workers squeezing every copper they can out of owners trying to weasel their way out of an agreement they signed four months ago, but a money spat is a tough sell when the world is upside down.

On the subject of high finance, the most noted voice in the CBS sports blurt box, Jim Nantz, is looking for a hefty raise in pay from the $6.5 million he now collects for flapping his gums on the network’s NFL, college hoops, and PGA coverage. Nantz’ contract expires next summer and it’s a good bet that he’s aware his sidekick in the CBS football booth, Tony Romo, draws an annual stipend of $17.5 million. I’m sure he also knows that Fox Sports pays its do-everything squawk box Joe Buck $10.5 million per annum. I don’t know what the bookies in Vegas are thinking, but I’d say the over/under on Nantz’ next deal is $12 million.

If that isn’t obscene enough for you, consider this: England footy legend David Beckham will be paid $53 million over the next three years to do nothing. Becks has signed on as an ‘icon’ player in the EA Sports video game FIFA 21, and he’ll be making more money in fake footy than he did while kicking real balls for sides like Man U, Real Madrid and LA Galaxy. Makes for a nifty marketing promo, don’t you think—Fake It Like Beckham!

New Kim, a two-year-old female Belgian racing pigeon, recently sold for $1.9 million at auction. No bird has ever landed that large a windfall. At least not since Elin Nordegren flew the coop on Tiger.

If I owned a pigeon, I believe I would name it Clay.

The most vulgar man in sports, Conor McGregor, has signed to fight someone I’ve never heard of in the UFC octagon next month. I’m pretty sure I’ll be too busy to give a damn that night. Or any other night, for that matter.

Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News calls Derek Jeter “the most famous Yankee since Mickey Mantle.” Apparently Mike nodded off when Reggie Jackson arrived in Gotham and became Mr. October.

TSN has decided that the 1981 Edmonton E-Somethings are the greatest of all Canadian Football League championship sides. No argument here.

Some folks are quite giddy that the CFL has released a 2021 schedule, with a full 18-game crusade for each of the nine sides. Rick LeLacheur is, in fact, “beyond excited” at the prospect of his B.C. Lions performing in front of fewer than the 12,000 bodies that normally gather under the B.C. Place Stadium bubble top in downtown Vancity. What the Leos president and no one else in Rouge Football can tell us, though, is who’s footing the bill. I mean, if they couldn’t afford a mini-season in 2020, what makes anyone believe the three-downs game is good to go next summer/autumn? The schedule is nothing more than a goodwill gesture and, as I scribbled last week, it isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on unless the large lads are grabbing grass in June. Sorry to be a Debbie Downer about my favorite league, but it’s true.

The Edmonton Oilers owe a Dallas hotel $55,000 for two stays last season. And here I thought the World Hockey Association was dead.

A most foul wind blew during a recent match between world No. 2 Ronnie O’Sullivan and Matthew Stevens at the Northern Ireland Open snooker tournament. One of the participants farted, you see, and it was no silent bomb. “That was a very unfortunate noise there,” one of the commentators observed while the players and match referee glanced mischievously at one another. “I don’t know who it was from…I’ve got my suspicions.” Eventually, O’Sullivan won the match, 4-2, then copped a guilty plea, saying, “I’m taking full ownership of that one.”

The Florida Panthers have hired Brett Peterson, a Black man, as assistant general manager, which prompted this reaction from Akim Aliu of the Hockey Diversity Alliance: “It’s long overdue. We feel there’s a lot of people of color that are deserving of jobs and also people from different genders. Obviously women I think are very adapt at doing a good job in the game of hockey.” Ya, Aliu and his HDA think so highly of women in hockey that there isn’t a Mrs., Miss, Ms or Ma’am in the group. Go ahead. Call up the HDA website and you’ll see nothing but the faces and names of men. I contacted the HDA to inquire about its lack of diversity, but received no reply. Aliu and his boys-only club might want to practise diversity before squawking about diversity.

I get a laugh out of bandwagon jumpers in jock journalism, guys like Jack Todd, whose column has returned to the sports pages of the Montreal Gazette, and Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna. Todd called the Miami Marlins’ hiring of Kim Ng as general manager “the best thing that has happened to Major League Baseball since the Red Sox shook the curse. The time is now and Ng is the woman.” Simmons, meanwhile, wrote: “I wish I had a daughter to share this with.” I call BS on that. When was the last time either of them wrote about women’s sports, other than the Olympics when there’s no choice? Where were they when the Canadian Women’s Hockey League was still in operation and hungering for coverage? They didn’t notice the CWHL until the doors were shuttered. So they can spare us the faux concern.

Simmons, of course, has a long history of pooh-poohing female athletes and the games they play, and his recent list of the 50 most influential sports figures in the Republic of Tranna over the past 50 years tells us all we need to know about his thoughts on the distaff portion of the playground. His top-50 actually includes 59 people, all but one of them men. That’s right, in half a century, only one woman, tennis player Bianca Andreescu, made the cut. No Fran Rider and no Angela James, each hugely influential in Ponytail Puck and based in The ROT. One of them, James, is in the Hockey Hall of Fame and Rider should be.

I don’t know if anyone at the Winnipeg Sun has plans to compile a similar top-50 for the most influential sports figures in Good Ol’ Hometown during past half century, but I guarantee there’d be more than one woman included in the group. Benny Hatskin would top the list, of course, but you can be damn certain there’d be room for Clara Hughes, Jennifer Jones, Cindy Klassen, Connie Laliberte and Susan Auch, among other women.

And, finally, there’s only one thing worse than wearing a mask—not wearing a mask.

Let’s talk about panhandling on Parliament Hill…a new CFL might look like the (really) old CFL…the PWHPA pity party…a tip of the bonnet to Melissa Martin…the week in jock journalism…dead weight and dead horses…and other things on my mind

Hey, buddy, can you spare a dime?

How about 300 million of them? Do I hear 1,500,000,000?

Apparently Randy Ambrosie doesn’t think that’s too much of an ask, because he’s panhandling on Parliament Hill these days, hoping that Prime Minister Trudeau the Younger is a fan of three-downs football and has a spare $30 million to $150 million stashed in his couch at Rideau Cottage.

If not…well, that’s the part of the big beg that Ambrosie has yet to spell out, but it suggests the end could be nigh for the Canadian Football League. Final score: COVID-19, CFL-0.

And, no, now that you’ve asked, I don’t think that’s being alarmist or extremist.

Look, I realize the CFL already has had more sticks of Acme dynamite blow up in its face than Wile E. Coyote, but the COVID-19 pandemic is a different kind of beast. The sports world will be harder to put together than a broken egg, and our quirky game requires a special kind of fix.

Rouge Football, you see, isn’t doable without fannies in the pews, even if the Argonauts and the dismissive citizenry in the Republic of Tranna do their best to prove otherwise. It can’t work. Not in The ROT, not in Good Ol’ Hometown, not on the Left Flank, where the locals won’t even come in from the rain to watch the Lions.

Thus, if turnstiles aren’t turning, it’s folly to discuss a Coles Notes version of a 2020 CFL crusade commencing on the Labor Day weekend.

Which means, yes, short of Trudeau the Younger morphing into PM Pigskin and tossing $30M into Commish Randy’s begging cap immediately (and another $120M if this season is a no-go), the CFL as we know it is likely a done deal.

“What would happen if that $30 million assistance was denied?” TSN’s Dave Naylor asked Randy the Panhandler the other day.

“I’m not indulging in the question what happens if it doesn’t work because I believe we’re going to find a way to make it work,” came the answer.

No surprise that Commish Randy would decline to engage in doomsday talk. He’s one of those dudes who’ll tell you his watch can’t possibly be broken because it shows the correct time twice a day. He’s never seen a half-empty stadium. Not even BMO Field in The ROT. Always half full. He knows what an empty piggy bank looks like, though, and he recognizes that saving the CFL will take more than a GoFundMe page.

And that’s a very grim reckoning for many of my vintage.

I remember when the CFL was the big dog in town, because we didn’t have National Hockey League outfits to call our own out in the colonies. But we had Kenny Ploen, the Lincoln Locomotive, Bud Grant and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Saskatchewan had the Little General, George, Gluey Huey and the Roughriders. Calgary had Eagle Day, Earl the Earthquake, Ham Hands and the Stampeders. Edmonton had Spaghetti Legs, the China Clipper, Johnny Bright and the Eskimos. B.C. had Peanut Butter Joe, Willie the Wisp, Nub and the Lions.

So a Canada without Rouge Football? Sorry, that’s not my Canada.

It would be like a pub without pints. A church without prayer. The McKenzie Brothers without brown pops, toques, earmuffs and a “beauty day, eh.”

But that’s my take, owing to the fact I was weaned on the game when single-bar face masks were still in vogue, and east was east and west was west and never the twain did meet until the Grey Grail was up for grabs.

Others, however, won’t be swayed by notions of nostalgia and Canadiana culture. They don’t want their tax dollars used to pay Mike Reilly’s and Bo Levi Mitchells’ $700,000 salaries, and certainly not Commish Randy’s reported annual stipend of half a million loonies. That’s an impossible sell when many thousands among the rabble are forced to feed at the public trough due to COVID-19, and going-out-of-business signs are popping up like dandelions.

I’ve heard the CFL described as a mom-and-pop operation and, in the grand scheme of things, I suppose it is. It’s dwarfed by the goliath that is the National Football League, and robust broadcasting contracts allow the other main players (National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, National Hockey League, Major League Soccer) to re-enter the fray sans customers. At least temporarily.

Not so Rouge Football.

Pundits suggest Commish Randy’s beg is a Hail Mary pass, and I’m inclined to agree. But, hey, Trudeau the Younger is a good Catholic boy, so he probably owns a rosary and might have an “in” when it comes to answered prayers.

If not, I fear there’s a very real possibility the CFL will run out of downs.

I don’t want to pay Bo Levi Mitchell’s wage anymore than the next person but, for the record, I have no problem with the CFL panhandling on Parliament Hill. I’d do the same thing. That doesn’t make it the right thing, but it doesn’t make it wrong, either.

The hardest part of Commish Randy’s sales pitch? Convincing the feds that people hither and yon actually give a damn about Rouge Football. He can wax poetic about the beauty of the three-downs game, how it’s a significant and historic thread in the country’s fabric, but he can’t sugar coat the head counts in our three largest markets—the Republic of Tranna, Montreal, Vancouver. I’ve seen more people at a neighborhood flea market than the Argos attract to BMO Field. The Lions are a rumor in B.C. Montreal showed a pulse late last season, but it was faint. So never mind the odious notion of bailing out millionaire and billionaire owners, how does Commish Randy sell the feds on a product that most of the rabble is meh about?

No matter how this all shakes down, I’m convinced we’ll see someone ride a horse into a big-city hotel lobby on the final Sunday in November once again. But not this year. A post-pandemic CFL won’t look the same, at least not initially. I see reduced rosters, more Canadians and fewer imports on game-day rosters, wage shrinkage (on and off the field), and two leagues under the CFL banner: The Western Football League and the Eastern Football Union. No more interlocking play. Just West v. West/East v. East until the Grey Cup game. You know, like it was in the 1950s and into the ’60s. And road trips on the bus (except to B.C.) to lower costs. That’s what the tea leaves are telling me, so remember where you read it first. Or not.

What a surprise—the CFL asks for money from the feds and we hear squawking from other athletes, notably Liz Knox, one of the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association mouthpieces. “We’re asking for peanuts compared to a $150-million ask,” she bleated, recalling the collapse of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League last spring. “When the CWHL was folding, we were talking in the hundreds of thousands to get us in the clear so the league didn’t have to fold. We’re talking two or three CFL salaries. That would (have) made the difference of us literally surviving or not. Women’s sport is often seen as a charity, but that’s not the narrative that we’re hearing about the CFL and their situation right now.” Well, actually, that’s exactly what many among the rabble are calling the CFL these days—a charity case. Liz might want to try a different narrative.

Why is it that members of the PWHPA seem to be caught in a never-ending pity party, constantly griping about the sorry lot in life that they’ve created for themselves and demanding what they “deserve,” yet we never hear similar grumbling from the National Women’s Hockey League? NWHL leaders simply go about their business, adding an expansion franchise in the Republic of Tranna, conducting a player draft, and prepping for the 2020 crusade. At last report, 26 women are already on board for the NWHL’s sixth season, and none of them are bitching about “deserving” a living wage. That’s what they’re building toward—a better tomorrow for Ponytail Puck—and I’d say they’re going about it the right way.

In the winter of 2015, I was having a discussion with friend/former colleague Judy Owen about sports scribes at Winnipeg’s two dailies, and I directed her attention to a young writer still trying to find her way in the rag trade. “I really like Melissa Martin’s stuff,” I told Jude. “She doesn’t cover things the same old, same old way. She has a different style, and I like different. She’s the best pure writer they have at the Freep.” Jude didn’t disagree, but she seemed genuinely surprised, if not mildly amused, that I harbored such high regard for Melissa. Well, fast forward to spring 2020: Melissa won her second National Newspaper Award the other night, as top columnist in the country. Like I was saying five years ago, she’s the best they’ve got at the Drab Slab. Still. Too bad she only makes cameo appearances in the toy department.

The week in jock journalism…

Really nice read from Mad Mike McIntyre of the Drab Slab on Ralph Wild, a 101-year-old who’s been root, root, rooting for the Blue Bombers since Buddy Tinsley almost drowned during the Mud Bowl at Varsity Stadium in the Republic of Tranna. If you’re scoring at home, that was in 1950, so Ralph has seen some football…Shrinkage alert: The Winnipeg Sun sports section was reduced to just four pages three days last week. And, get this: They managed to fill those pages mostly with local copy. Imagine that. Running local copy by local scribes instead of all the usual flapdoodle from the Republic of Tranna. What a concept…Mind you, it was back to normal for today’s edition, with a Toronto-centric piece on the sports front and more on the inside…Made a point of watching the Her Mark show on TSN, but I’m afraid it totally missed the mark. The guest list included Christine Sinclair, Tessa Virtue, Marie-Philip Poulin, Kia Nurse, Natalie Spooner and Hayley Wickenheiser, and host Kate Beirness said, “I hope the stories they share will be as uplifting to viewers as they have been to me.” Excuse me? What stories? It was a series of public service announcements. So let’s just call it an opportunity lost for female athletes…Why does TSN, or anyone for that matter, think Will Ferrell is funny? He isn’t. Ferrell pranked the Seattle Seahawks on a Zoom gathering the other day, expressing his “love” for quarterback Russell Wilson and saying “let’s make a baby.” Beirness described the bit as “fantastic.” No. It was totally lame, just like Ferrell’s gig in the TSN curling booth…Sad news out of Calgary: Longtime broadcaster Russ Peake died at age 80. You’d have to look long and hard to find a nicer man than Russ.

If you have a spare 50 minutes in your day (and who doesn’t?), grab a beer or a glass of vino and check out Road to the Grey Cup, a documentary on the Bombers’ journey to their three-downs title last November. It’s the handiwork of Rheanne Marcoux (creative director), Riley Marra (producer, editor, videographer), Jeremy Derochers and Sam Calvert (videographers) and it’s boffo stuff.

There was considerable ballyhoo on Saturday when an extremely large Icelandic lad named Hafthor Bjornsson established a world record for dead-lifting 1,104 pounds. What’s the big deal? The Cleveland Browns have been carrying that much dead weight since the 1960s.

There’s also been much natter about the incomparable Secretariat winning NBC’s virtual running of the Kentucky Derby on Saturday. Big Red out-galloped a field that included 12 other Triple Crown champions, including 1919 winner Sir Barton, who finished last by about 15 lengths. Talk about flogging a dead horse.

The talented Murat Ates of The Athletic has scanned the Winnipeg Jets roster and determined that there are five untouchables: Connor Hellebuyck, Rink Rat Scheifele, Blake Wheeler, Josh Morrissey and Neal Pionk. That’s right, he’ll trade away Twig Ehlers, Kyle Connor or Puck Finn, but not Neal Pionk, whose only a top-pairing defenceman by default. I admire Murat’s way with words, but I’m not hiring him as GM of my hockey team.

And, finally, if the last month and a half has seemed more like an entire year, and if you can’t tell one day from the next, you’ve got an idea what life is like for a lot of seniors. Isolation can be very numbing, physically and mentally.

Let’s talk about women’s sports and the media…tough times for Ponytail Puck…pigging out on Big Macs…the Barnum and Bailey Brier…Chevy’s sales pitch to free agents…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and I sprung forward this morning and brought some random thoughts along with me…

I think TSN and Sportsnet are trying to fool us into believing they actually give a damn about women’s sports.

Sportsnet’s Christine Simpson and Kim Davis.

I mean, both of our national jock networks have devoted copious air to the distaff portion of the playground in the past week, featuring interviews with movers and shakers like Stacey Allaster, Kim Davis, Kim Ng, Cammi Granato and Kendall Coyne Schofield, and they’ve also given us retro peeks at moments of girl glory delivered by Brooke Henderson, Bianca Andreescu and others.

It’s been boffo stuff.

And tonight we’ll hear the all-female broadcast crew of Leah Hextall, Cassie Campbell-Pascall and Christine Simpson work the Calgary Flames-Vegas Golden Knights skirmish on Hometown Hockey, something that—dare I say?—smacks of gimmickry and likely will have numerous men squirming and pressing the mute button on their remotes.

But here’s my question in the midst of all this rah, rah, rah about ponytail sports: Where are TSN and Sportsnet when it really matters?

You know, like when the Canadian Women’s Hockey League was in business. Like during the women’s Under-18 world hockey championship. TSN covering competition like the world shinny tourney or World Cup soccer are no-brainers, but to the best of my recollection Sportsnet broadcast the grand sum of two CWHL games before the operation bolted its doors last spring. I could be wrong. It might have been three. Meanwhile, TSN completely ignored the U18 event.

The National Women’s Hockey League, meanwhile, dropped the puck on its playoffs Friday night, but I haven’t heard a whisper about it on either network.

In the small hours of Thursday, Friday and Saturday mornings, I counted 136 news-related videos on the TSN website. The male sports v. female sports scorecard read 133-3 in favor of the dudes, and that included Justin Bieber practicing his shootout skills.

None of that’s surprising, of course, because numerous studies advise us that female jocks receive just two to six per cent of air time on sportscasts in the True North and U.S. The amount of space allotted to female sports in our daily newspapers would be similar. Maybe even less.

So, ya, it’s great that TSN and Sportsnet have been saluting women the past few days, but what’s their excuse for the other 51 weeks of the year?

According to a 2016 report, a study of sports coverage on our national networks (French and English) in 2014 showed that female athletes were featured in just four per cent of 35,000 hours of programming. More than half of that four per cent allotment showed women’s events at the Sochi Olympics and/or women’s tennis. Which means, of course, all other female activity received less than two per cent air time.

Whenever I contemplate the minimalist coverage female sports receives on air and in print, I think of comments from noted jock journos Steve Simmons and Bruce Dowbiggin.

“I don’t believe there’s a demand from the public for women’s sports,” Postmedia’s Simmons told the Ryerson Review of Journalism in 2002. He also advocated for the removal of women’s hockey from the Olympic Games in 2010, calling it a “charade.”

Dowbiggin, meanwhile, wrote last year that ponytail sports was “second-tier entertainment” and, in another piece, added, “You can’t swing a cat without hitting a lesbian in a women’s sport.”

I’m quite uncertain why Dowbiggin would want to swing a cat and hit a lesbian, or any woman for that matter, but I believe his indelicate and disturbingly crass remark about felines and females was an attempt at cutesy humor. If so, he failed. Miserably.

Point is, those are two loud voices in jock journalism completely dismissing female athletes.

Dowbiggin once was an award-winning jock journo and a main player on the national stage, twice winning a Gemini Award for sports reporting and broadcasting. He now cranks out opinion essays for Troy Media and his own Not The Public Broadcaster. Simmons is a high-profile columnist whose scribblings appear in Postmedia rags across the country.

As much as I wish it was otherwise, I’m afraid theirs is the prevailing attitude in our jock media.

It’s worth noting that neither of the Winnipeg dailies has a female in its stable of full-time sports scribes. The Drab Slab allows the talented and very readable Melissa Martin to make guest appearances for the provincial and national Scotties Tournament of Hearts, but the Sun hasn’t had a Jill writing jock stuff since Judy Owen left the building. Judy is one of only four female scribes with whom I worked during 30 years in the rag trade, the others being Peggy Stewart (Winnipeg Tribune), the lovely Rita Mingo (Trib) and Mary Ormsby (Toronto Sun). It’s been more than 50 years since I started at the Trib, and in that time I’ve known just five female sports writers in Good Ol’ Hometown—Judy, Peggy, Rita, Barb Huck and Ashley Prest. I know some women applied the last time the Sun had an opening, but Scott Billeck got the gig.

What a truly dreadful time it’s been for Ponytail Puck. First the CWHL ceased operations last spring, then close to 200 of the planet’s best players had a hissy fit and decided to boycott and trash talk the NWHL, and now the world championship in Nova Scotia has been cancelled due to the coronavirus. Tough to grow the game when all you have at the end of the day is a bunch of photo-ops with Billie Jean King.

Speaking of Billie Jean, she’ll be part of the Hometown Hockey telecast tonight on Sportsnet, but we shouldn’t expect any hard-hitting questions from either Ron MacLean or Tara Slone. My guess is MacLean will serve the tennis legend and women’s rights activist nothing but softball questions, while Tara swoons.

Sportsnet won’t be the only network featuring an all-female broadcast crew tonight. Kate Scott, Kendall Coyne Schofield and AJ Mleczko will be the voices for NBCSN’s telecast of the St. Louis Blues-Chicago Blackhawks skirmish, and I just hope they realize that criticism is part of the gig because they’ll be hearing it from the yahoos.

The PWHPA—also the talking heads on Sportsnet—would like the five-team NWHL to disappear at the conclusion of its fifth season, so they’ll be disappointed to hear this sound bite from NWHLPA director Anya Packer: “I’m excited to watch the growth. I think there’s going to be a lot of growth in the off-season. There’s a lot of conversations hosted today that will affect tomorrow. There’s a lot of conversations that happened before the season began that are going to make some major strides and changes as we move into season six. I’m excited for season six.” If they want to play serious shinny next winter, the PWHPA might want to rethink that boycott thing.

The rapidly spreading coronavirus has a number of sports teams/leagues talking about playing in empty stadiums. In other words, just like a Toronto Argonauts home game.

Ya, I think it’s great that the National Hockey League salary cap is going up and Winnipeg Jets general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff will have a boatload of Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman’s cash to spend on free agents this summer, but that won’t make it any easier for Chevy to sell Good Ol’ Hometown to high-profile players. River City remains No. 1 on most NHLers’ no-go lists, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

I don’t know about you, but every time I see the Nashville Predators play, I have the same thought: “How do these guys beat anybody?”

Does this make sense to anyone other than Tranna Maple Leafs GM Kyle Dubas?
William Nylander: 30-goal seasons—1; salary—$9 million ($8.3 million bonus).
Kyle Connor: 30-goal seasons—3; salary—$7.5 million ($0 bonus).

People poke fun at the Canadian Football League for rewarding failure by giving a single point on a missed field goal. Well, excuse me, but the NHL does that very thing almost nightly with its ridiculous loser point.

Watched Sports Central on Sportsnet on Friday morning and I didn’t hear one word about the Brier. Nada. They managed to squeeze in highlights of Joey Chestnut pigging out on Big Macs, but the Canadian men’s curling championship wasn’t worthy of their attention. Canada’s #1 Sports Network my ass.

There’ve been so many incredible circus shots during this year’s Brier, I expected to see Barnum and Bailey meeting in today’s final.

So I call up the Globe and Mail on Saturday and note that Cathal Kelly is writing about the Brier. I roll my eyes, because Kelly doesn’t know a hog line from Hog Town. Well, surprise, surprise. It’s an excellent, entertaining read. And honest. “Don’t look for curling expertise here,” he writes. “You won’t find any.”

Did Northern Ontario skip Brad Jacobs look like he was having any fun before being ushered out of the Brier? I swear, he’s more serious than a tax audit, and it isn’t a good look.

WTF? During the first two Brier matches I watched on TSN last weekend, I heard three F-bombs and one goddamn. I heard zero F-bombs and zero goddamns during the entire week of watching the Scotties on TSN. Just saying.

Actually, I’d like to know why male curlers feel a need to go all potty mouth, yet the women don’t. I mean, they’re playing the same game, playing for the same stakes, making the same shots, feeling the same pressure. It would make for an interesting social study.

Big headlines all over the Internet last week about movie guy Spike Lee having a hissy fit and refusing to attend any more New York Knicks games this season. Hmmm. I must have missed the memo that informed us we’re supposed to give a damn what Spike Lee does.

Gotta say, TSN’s man on UFC, Robin Black, is the creepiest guy on sports TV.

The aforementioned Joey Chestnut set some sort of world record for gluttony last week when he scarfed down 32 Big Macs in 38 minutes. We haven’t seen a pigout like that since Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs offence ate the San Francisco 49ers’ lunch in the Super Bowl.

The Winnipeg Jets are in the grip of an intense playoff battle, two Manitoba teams were running hot at the Brier, and what was featured on the sports front of the Winnipeg Sun last Monday morning? Toronto Blue Jays wannabe pitcher Nate Pearson. Good gawd, man, who makes those horrible decisions?

And, finally, in a salute to International Women’s Day, these are my fave female athletes of all time: Wilma Rudolph, Sue Bird, Martina Navratilova, Tessa Virtue, Nancy Greene, Evonne Goolagong, Katarina Witt, Steffi Graf and Jennifer Jones.

Let’s talk about Jennifer Jones and Father Time…a tradition of top-drawer curling coverage…JLo, Shakira and a big-hair halftime show…Cassie for commish…SRO for the Rivalry Series…and oh woe is Puck Finn

Monday morning coming down in 3, 2, 1…and now that the football season is over, it’s time for pitchers and catchers to report…

It would be easy this morning to write off Jennifer Jones as the latest of curling’s been-there, done-that champions who’ve discovered they cannot outrun Father Time.

After all, shots that once were so routinely made now often seem so iffy.

Like her last-rock draw attempt in the fifth end of the Manitoba Scotties Tournament of Hearts final on Sunday in beautiful downtown Rivers.

All Jones needed was the eight-foot ring which, for a world-class curler, is no more difficult than cracking an egg and dropping it in a frying pan. If you were to ask the Olympic and world champion how often she’s drawn the eight-foot in a career of making the other team cry uncle, it would number in the many thousands. Not this time, though. Her stone ground to a halt, as if some unseen hand had reached down and placed a piece of sandpaper in its path. It was a shot she had no business missing.

Thus, instead of scoring one for a 4-2 advantage, it was a steal of three for Kerri Einarson and a 3-5 deficit.

Ultimately, though, it wasn’t that gaffe that derailed Jones in her bid to earn a ninth Buffalo jacket, because she rallied to manufacture a 6-5 advantage through seven ends of a game that was as erratic as a teenager’s mood swings. But she never scored again.

In the final reckoning, the Manitoba women’s championship was decided by two bricks: Each skip’s last in the 10th.

Kerri Einarson, Val Sweeting, Shannon Birchard, Briane Meilleur

Both the four-foot and button were blocked by enough granite to sculpt a life-size statue of Sandra Schmirler, making it a delicate bit of business. Einarson’s rock took the scenic route and stopped—right…on…the…nut. And totally buried. Still, Jones had hope. She could glance off one of her yellow stones and nudge Einarson’s shot rock off the button. Game, set and off to Moose Jaw for the national Scotties, right?

Except that’s not how Jones’ universe unfolds anymore.

As she hunkered in the hack, I thought to myself, “No way she makes this shot.” I don’t recall ever doubting Jones before. She missed, her rock wrecking out front.

So, instead of swanning off to Moose Jaw with the Buffalo on their backs later this month, Jones and her gal pals—Kaitlyn Lawes, Jocelyn Peterman, Dawn McEwen—will be required to get the better of Tracy Fleury in a one-off, wild-card game on Valentine’s Day. The winner plays on, the loser returns home, presumably without parting gifts.

Even if she is to win the wild card, a daunting task is stretched out in front of the 45-year-old Jones.

The Scotties field includes defending champion Chelsea Carey, former champ Rachel Homan, Krista McCarville, Robyn Silvernagle, Suzanne Birt and Laura Walker, a Scotties neophyte out of Edmonton but we all know that Alberta never sends a scrub team to the national tournament.

And that’s not to forget Einarson and Gimli playmates Val Sweeting, Shannon Birchard and Briane Meilleur, who enter the fray no worse than even-money to bring home the bauble.

That’s tough sledding for Jones.

Still, I wouldn’t be so hasty in having the bugler play taps for the six-time Canadian and two-time world titleholder. Jones still has, as they say, game. She and her St. Vital accomplices stand third in the country’s team rankings, and they didn’t get there by accident.

So let’s put it this way: I’ll be surprised if Jennifer Jones wins another Scotties, but I also won’t be surprised.

Thoroughly enjoyed reading Melissa Martin’s daily dispatches from Rivers. I assume the deep-thinkers at the Drab Slab have booked Double M’s passage to Moose Jaw, where she can cover the curling and hang out with local resident Burton Cummings. Unless Burt and old buddy Randy Bachman are already on tour by then.

Also many good reads from Ted Wyman of the Winnipeg Sun. River City rags have a long history of top-drawer curling coverage (the best in the country, if you ask me), so I hope the tabloid plans to send him to Moose Jaw, where he can check out some of those tunnels Al Capone left behind. Just as long as he doesn’t get lost between draws.

It’s about Super Bowl LIV: Good game.

It’s about the halftime show, featuring JLo and Shakira: Lots of big hair, legs, gyrating groins and lip-syncing.

It’s about my pre-game prediction of Kansas City Chiefs XXXV, San Francisco 49ers XVII: Not bad. Final score was 31-20.

It’s about the American commercials: Haven’t seen any of them yet.

Caught the latest edition of Hometown Hockey on Sunday, and I must say that Sportsnet is pushing hard for women’s hockey. I just hope they’re as geeked up about Ponytail Puck if and when there’s a Women’s National Hockey League with outfits based in Canada. They basically ignored the Canadian Women’s Hockey League before it turned out the lights.

There’s a heavy bias in Sportsnet coverage of the women’s game, in that it’s slanted heavily in favor of the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association and its Dream Gap Tour. And Cassie Campbell-Pascall is given free rein to preach falsehoods about the National Women’s Hockey League, which is never a good idea. Objective journalists would invite NWHL commissioner Dani Rylan to the discussion and get her take on where the game’s at and where she sees it going. But Ron MacLean abdicated long ago, Tara Slone isn’t really a journo, and Campbell-Pascall is too busy campaigning to become the first commish of the WNHL.

We get another serving of Ponytail Puck this very evening, and this time it’s the real thing, not one of those half-baked Dream Gap scrimmages. It’s Canada vs. U.S.A. in the Rivalry Series at Save-On-Foods Memorial Arena in Victoria, and the barn is sold out. The barn is also just one block away from my modest dwelling, but financial limitations prevent me from attending. I shall watch it on TSN, though, even if it’s long past my bedtime.

Just wondering: Why are so many among the rabble down on Patrik Laine? True, the kid’s no Auston Matthews, and not just because he keeps his pants on in public. Puck Finn doesn’t score like Matthews, but last time I looked he had 19 goals, which likely means another 30-snipe season. That would make him 4-for-4. Seems to me that would have been acceptable when the Winnipeg Jets used their first shoutout to claim Laine in the 2016 National Hockey League auction of teenage talent. So why isn’t it good enough anymore? Maybe if Puck Finn went ice fishing instead of playing Fortnite he’d be more agreeable to the masses.

And, finally, it’s Feb. 3 and Paul Maurice is still head coach of the Jets. I told you he would be.

Let’s talk about the rise, fall and rise of Ponytail Puck…the NHL or bust for women…get a grip, Mitch…puffball from Tim & Sid…the return of Peter Puck…good reads…Coach PoMo’s grip…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and the NHL all-star game was rubbish and some of you might think the following is too…

People are gushing about Ponytail Puck again.

Oh, yes, they are. Just like last year at this time, when Kendall Coyne-Schofield made her wowza dash around the freeze during National Hockey League all-star hijinks in San Jose.

Once she had completed her lap in the lickety-split time of 14.346 seconds and eyeballs were popped back into sockets, the hosannas rained down from the highest perches and from every corner of Planet Puckhead.

Bravo Kendall!

It didn’t matter that she was slower than all but one participant in the fastest-skater competition. After all, they were guys—the NHL’s elite—and Kendall’s a she. Thus, jaws dropped and people who, until that moment, truly believed girls and women only wear white skates with picks on the blades gave ponder to the notion that Ponytail Puck might be something worth checking out.

And so it was on Friday night at the Enterprise Center in St. Loo. This was the 2020 NHL all-star festival. A showcase event. Packed barn. Party atmosphere. And the women had the spotlight all to themselves for 20 minutes, playing a bit of loosey-goosey but quite earnest 3-on-3 pond hockey.

It didn’t really matter that 10 Canadians beat 10 Americans 2-1. It only mattered that there was a there there.

“I think the women’s game knocked down a door,” gushed Cassie Campbell-Pascall, the former Olympian who called the exercise in concert with play-by-play man Jim Hughson. As the game expired, she talked about “the magnitude of what has happened. It’s a big moment, it really is. That’s an understatement.”

“Cassie,” Hughson responded, “all I can say after watching that is ‘find these players a place to play.’”

And that’s the rub, isn’t it?

The Coyne-Schofield dash a year ago is considered a signature moment for Ponytail Puck. Indeed, just last week, this was the headline on an Emily Sadler article for the Sportsnet website: “How Kendall Coyne-Schofield’s clutch All-Star performance changed the game.”

But did it really?

Post-Kendall, the distaff side of the game gained all the momentum of a stalled Zamboni being pushed up the side of a mountain. First, the Canadian Women’s Hockey League folded, then between 150 and 200 of the planet’s premier performers snubbed their noses at the National Women’s Hockey League, refusing to play for pauper’s pay. So they gathered under the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association banner and created the barnstorming, hit-and-miss Dream Gap Tour, which has been met with a meh by the masses and mainstream media.

Basically, they’ve reduced themselves to a novelty act, much like the Harlem Globetrotters, but without the wizardry, the cornball antics and the packed houses.

And, yes, Friday’s 3-on-3 exhibition was a novelty within a novelty, because the NHL all-star festival is nine parts gimmickry and one part substance. I mean, if the NHL cancelled its annual glitz fest, I’m not sure anyone over the age of 13 would produce anything that resembles a pout.

But this edition was significant and special because of the women.

Question is: Will they seize the moment and take advantage of renewed interest, or will they squander it like summer wages? You know, the way they did last year.

“I think they sent a message that if you haven’t watched women’s hockey you better start,” Campbell-Pascall said in her wrap on Sportsnet.

Well, Cassie might want to have a quiet word with her sisters about that.

I mean, really, what can the Dream Gappers do to build on the St. Loo experience? They have a product to sell but nowhere to sell it. And that’s of their own doing. They quit the NWHL. Thus, they won’t make themselves available to the masses again until the final day of February, when they stage more of their glorified scrimmages in Philadelphia. After that, who knows? The events calendar on the PWHPA website is blank.

Talk about a buzz kill. And they have no one to blame but themselves.

It’s quite evident that the PWHPA has a one-prong strategy: Wait for NHL owners to step up and claim them in hockey’s version of an adopt-a-pet program, because that’s what they “deserve.” But hoping/expecting multi-millionaires and billionaires to gamble on an enterprise guaranteed to lose large boatloads of money is a questionable gambit at best and a fool’s bet at worst. NHL bankrolls don’t have to be told the CWHL was buried in a money crunch, or that only one NWHL outfit, the Minnesota Whitecaps, has shown a profit. I’m sure they’ve also heard National Basketball Association commissioner Adam Silver talk about dropping an average of $10 million per year on the WNBA side of the business. Thus the reluctance/refusal of NHL owners to skate down that rabbit hole. Plus, commish Gary Bettman has repeatedly stressed that there’d be no NHL women’s league unless he had an open landscape. So the next step is obvious: The PWHPA and the NWHL need to engage in meaningful dialogue and find a common road to travel, not separate paths. What part of that do the Dream Gappers not understand?

The aforementioned Hughson shouts about finding the Dream Gappers “a place to play,” but he (and many others) ignores the reality that the NWHL would be a seven-team league today, with franchises in Montreal and the Republic of Tranna, if not for their boycott.

The award for the dumbest comment on the women’s 3-on-3 game goes to Mitch Marner of the Tranna Maple Leafs. “I think a lot of those players can play in (the NHL),” he said, apparently with a straight face.

The Dream Gappers certainly have friends in the media, but it doesn’t really help the cause when people like Tara Slone, Ron MacLean and Tim & Sid do nothing but wave pom-poms and toss out puffball questions and hosannas. For example, Tim & Sid invited Campbell-Pascall for a natter last week, and she had this to say: “I believe we have at least 10 NHL franchises that want a team. I truly believe behind the scenes the NHL is ready for it. It’s well overdue in my opinion. I really hope that this is sort of the step to what we will see in the WNHL and I believe that it’s more imminent than it’s ever been before.” That went unchallenged. They should have asked her this: If there are 10 teams that “want” to bankroll a women’s club, why haven’t they done it? Are any of the 10 outfits in Canada? Where are the others located? Why are you waiting on the NHL instead of working with the NWHL to form a super league? Exactly what do you consider a “livable” wage? How can you convince the rabble to buy Ponytail Puck in enough numbers that a WNHL is viable and the players earn the $50,000 to $100,000 wages that Pascall-Campbell likes to talk about? I mean, you can’t make adults eat their Brussels sprouts and you can’t make them watch professional women’s hockey. But the jock journos refuse to ask pointed/fair questions because it’s considered bad manners and a betrayal of the cause. And that’s lame.

The finish of the Minnesota Whitecaps-Boston Pride skirmish on Saturday produced a classic call from the broadcasting tandem of Kelly Schultz and Alexis (Oh My God, I’m Sweating!) Pearson, not to mention some colorful commentary on Twitter. The Whitecaps won 4-3 with a final-minute goal, ending the Pride’s undefeated season (19-1), and the game was an SRO sellout at Tria Rink in St. Paul. It’ll be the same today when the teams do it all over again. It’s also noteworthy that the Pride sold out their two most recent matches at Warrior Ice Arena in Beantown, so the NWHL is getting along just fine without the Dream Gappers.

Had to laugh at this take on Ponytail Puck from Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna: “Here’s what I’d like to see. A six-team WNHL. Use the Original Six cities—or pick whichever six you want—and begin the process of building a steady, stable, sound, professional hockey league for women. But an NHL-backed league would have a shot. It’s still a gamble. It’s not a hugely expensive gamble. But it’s worth pushing for and pursuing. In a one-step-at-a-time kind of way.” That from a guy who has called Olympic women’s shinny a “charade” and advocated for it to be removed from the Winter Games. With allies like Simmons and Tie Domi, Ponytail Puck doesn’t have a prayer.

Of course the NHL 3-on-3 games were rubbish. What did you expect? Major League Baseball is the only big-time sport that puts on a watchable all-star game.

Also rubbish was that snake-like, Magic Marker puck tracker thingy used during some of the 3-on-3 activity. If it’s all the same to Gary Bettman and the geniuses in Gotham, I prefer my hockey without squiggly, black lines on the freeze, thank you. What’s next, the return of Peter Puck to tell us why the ice in the goal crease is blue?

Brett Hull made a cameo appearance during the all-star skills competition, and what a coincidence: The Golden Brett scored 741 goals in the NHL and he weighs 741 pounds today.

Department of good reads: 1) Murat Ates’ look at the Winnipeg Jets for The Athletic; 2) Mad Mike McIntyre’s essay on the Jets’ moms in the Drab Slab. Murat’s piece on a Jets players’ poll is a totally fun read, the kind of thing I’d like to see in the two River City dailies. It’s a good reason to subscribe to The Athletic, and that’s not a paid advertisement. It’s the truth.

For those of you who keep squawking about Paul Maurice needing a makeover, I remind you of something the Jets head knock said about his coaching style last June: “I’m not going to change the grip. We hit the ball down the fairway an awful lot. We had one go in the water on us in the playoffs, but I’m not sure that I’m changing my clubs or my grip yet.” So don’t say you weren’t warned.

Hey, lookee here. The Winnipeg Ice sit atop the East Division tables in The Dub, and I’d like to think that the rabble have noticed the new kid on the block. It’s just too bad they don’t have a bigger barn to play in. I mean, it’s a shame they can only squeeze 1,600 into Wayne Fleming Arena when there are more than 3,000 watching the Wheat Kings a hoot and a holler down the road in Brandon.

Why are so many people shocked when Serena Williams loses a tennis match? Nobody is afraid of her anymore, except perhaps line judges and umpires who’d rather not have a fuzzy ball shoved down their throats.

That’s quite the pickle the Winnipeg Blue Bombers are in. It’s reported that the Canadian Football League club wants to make Zach Collaros their main man behind centre, which would leave Matt Nichols out in the cold and his nose out of joint. For the record, I think they’d be doing the dirty to Nichols if they punt him, but it’s just another example of how cruel pro sports, especially football, can be.

And, finally, Sweet Home Alabama! Neil Young really is a Southern Man now. The Kelvin High dropout officially became a citizen of the United States the other day, just in time to vote Donald Trump out of the White House. I don’t know about you, but I won’t hold that against him.

Let’s talk about a fresh batch of ruffled feathers…Wheeler’s classy gesture…no-throw Jimmy G…the real NFL MVP…a lesbian at the Super Bowl…Denis the Tennis Menace…Tie Domi and the Dream Gappers…and curlers have day jobs, too

Monday morning coming down in 3, 2, 1…and I had a dream last night that dozens of enormous meteorites hit Earth and the only thing to survive was women’s hockey. Unfortunately, there was no one else left to watch it…

Oh…my…gawd.

The Winnipeg Jets held a players-only, closed-door, navel-gazing session immediately after their 5-2 loss to the Blackhawks on Sunday in the Toddlin’ Town, and you know what that means, don’t you?

That’s right. Cue the controversy and scandal.

I mean, the last time the Jets blocked entrance to their changing chamber and told news snoops to twiddle their thumbs on the heels of an irksome stumble, we were advised that the National Hockey League club was “rotten to the core” and the dressing room was “fractured.”

Why else would the local lads duck and hide, right?

Thus, galloping gossip ensued and we heard about fist fights in the room, fist fights in the parking lot, one player dating another player’s lady, Blake Wheeler and Dustin Byfuglien in an alpha dog power struggle, Patrik Laine pouting, jealousy over the amount of money in pay envelopes, and head coach Paul Maurice tossed some petrol on that bonfire of speculation at his season-end squawk with the boys and girls on the beat, mentioning something about “ruffled feathers.”

None of those charges was ever proven in a court of law, or even a kangaroo court, but there was no stuffing that genie back in the bottle. The Jets were “rotten to the core” and a closed-door meeting was the smoking gun.

As if.

Let me tell you something about closed-door meetings in hockey: They’re as commonplace as spitting.

There’s been a handful of them this crusade, and I believe the Tranna Maple Leafs have held two, although defrocked head coach Mike Babcock described the first one as a “family discussion.”

So, hopefully, news snoops at the Drab Slab won’t do the Chicken Little thing this time around and commence to writing fiction. Unless, of course, they can provide ample evidence that there’s something rotten in the state of Denmark. If so, we’ll be all ears..

Classy gesture by Jets captain Blake Wheeler when, before departing the freeze following Sunday’s skirmish, he congratulated Patrick Kane of the Blackhawks on his 1,000th NHL point. Nice touch.

A question about the San Francisco 49ers offence: Do they have any receivers? I mean, quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo tossed what, eight passes in Sunday’s 37-20 victory over the Green Bay Packers? He went more than an hour and a half without flinging the football. I’ve seen guys in straightjackets get more use out of a right arm. I can’t see Jimmy G getting away with that against the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIV, though. Let’s see him try to beat them with one arm tied behind his back.

After watching Patrick Mahomes do his thing in dismantling the Tennessee Titans on Sunday, I can’t imagine anyone in the National Football League is more valuable to his team than the Chiefs QB. Lamar Jackson will get the MVP nod, but it won’t seem right when Mahomes is playing in the large match on Feb. 2 in Miami.

Hey, check it out: One of the 49ers assistant coaches is a woman. And gay. That would be Katie Sowers, who works with the San Fran offence that put 37 points on the board v. the Packers. Imagine that. A lesbian coaching in the Super Bowl. Who’d have thunk?

Early Super Bowl LIV prediction: Kansas City XXXV, San Francisco XVII, JLo/Shakira X out of X stars.

Something tells me we’ll be seeing more of the spoiled-brat side of Denis (The Tennis Menace) Shapovalov on tour this year. Our guy Shapo is strung tighter than banjo strings, and he was reduced to a racquet-tossing mess in bowing out of the Australian Open on the weekend, losing 6-3, 6-7(7), 6-1, 7-6(3) to Marton Fucsovics of Hungary in the opening round. At one point, Shapo was tsk-tsked by umpire Renaud Lichtenstein for racquet abuse, which produced this growl: “It’s my racquet. I can do whatever the hell I want with it. What are you talking about? It’s a terrible call! Do your job! Do your job! That’s an absolute joke!” It wasn’t quite up to John McEnroe or Serena Williams standards on the rant-o-metre, but Shapo’s young. Give him time.

The Dream Gappers need to do themselves a favor—tell Tie Domi to shut his pie hole. Pronto.

Domi, you see, awoke one recent morning and, much to his deep disappointment, arrived at the disturbing realization that the world wasn’t paying him enough attention, thus he started talking about women’s hockey.

That would have been acceptable, I suppose, had Domi confined his comments to the family dinner table or a convenient man cave. Alas, he was given voice on the Spittin’ Chiclets podcast; the deep-thinkers plotting strategy for the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association thought it would be a swell idea to include him in their Closing The Gap function; Tara Slone and Ron MacLean provided him a pulpit on Hometown Hockey; and, finally, he used his Twitter feed to insult anyone who has the bad manners to disagree with the Gospel According to Tie.

“I’m gonna do whatever I can to help these women have a real league, and they deserve it,” Domi informed Slone and MacLean a week ago. “The NHL started with six teams and I think we could start, in good markets, I think we could start with six teams and, uh, that’s my goal, to help them, whatever I can do.”

“Amen,” swooned Slone.

Well, let me just say this about that: Ponytail Puck needs Tie Domi about as much as Michael Jordan needs a comb.

Domi was an NHL thug and still acts like one (more on that shortly). He couldn’t cut it in today’s NHL, because players need more in their tool box than two fists and a head full of poured concrete. He wears his 333 career fights—plus one with a spectator—as a badge of honor, and seems to think his history of cement-head hockey and an out-of-nowhere interest in the distaff side of the game qualifies him as a spokesman for Ponytail Puck.

“I’ve watched it three times now,” Domi boasted on Spittin’ Chiclets.

Three women’s games. Wow. That many, eh? I suppose if he watches three episodes of Grey’s Anatomy or New Amsterdam he’ll begin to share his knowledge of open-heart surgery with us, too.

Domi adds nothing to the conversation, except a bad attitude and to parrot what others have already said about the absence of a viable women’s pro league: “The NHL and the NHLPA really have to get involved. Fifty per cent of the crowd is girls, or women, so, like, you’re gonna have interest. And what do they have right now? They don’t have anything right now. They don’t have anything ’cause it got taken away from them, so…I’m a true believer it’s gotta be fixed, and that’s on the NHLPA and the NHL to get that right.”

Actually, they do have something right now. It’s called the National Women’s Hockey League. It’s just that Domi and those he pretends to squawk for—the PWHPA and its Dream Gap Tour—would rather trash talk than discuss ways of bridging the great divide in Ponytail Puck.

Consider this Twitter exchange last weekend:

Domi: “If you think that’s the best quality woman’s (sic) hockey has to offer your (sic) 100% wrong! NWHL is hurting woman’s (sic) hockey and the sooner they figure that out the better for the Sport! The time has come!”

Corinne Buie Stan Account: “Can you explain to me, in your own words, how the NWHL is hurting women’s hockey?”

Domi: “Your (sic) dumb.”

(We’ll have to excuse Domi has glaring spelling errors. After all, it must be difficult typing with two clenched fists.)

Anyway, the always-charming Domi went on to insult other NWHL supporters, telling them, “your (sic) dumb” and “your (sic) dummer (sic).”

That from a guy who, on Spittin’ Chiclets, claimed, “What’s most important is when people treat you with respect, you give it back, and I’ve always been that way.”

Sigh.

Once a thug, always a thug, and I’m surprised a number of the Dream Gappers have welcomed his voice to their crusade. Mind you, it wasn’t so long ago when Hilary Knight of the PWHPA was mean-mouthing the NWHL as a “glorified beer league,” so I suppose crapping on the women who just want to play hockey in an actual league is part of their strategy.

And that’s sad.

By way of contrast, consider what the NWHL has to say about members of the PWHPA participating in a 3-on-3 game at next weekend’s NHL all-star shindig: “Congratulations to the outstanding national team players from the U.S. and Canada selected to participate in the Elite Women’s 3-on-3. Every major showcase of women’s hockey is an important moment and a victory for all who care about the sport. This game will have speed, skill and magic, and we can’t wait to see it.” So, one group wants a cat fight, the other wants to keep it classy.

According to the PWHPA, total attendance was 4,310 for their six Dream Gap Tour scrimmages last weekend in the Republic of Tranna and Vaughan, Ont., which works out to an average of 718. The top head count was 1,151, the lowest 203 (there were actually less than 100 when they dropped the puck). Meanwhile, the Dream Gappers were in Waterloo on Saturday, and let’s just say the empty seats greatly outnumbered the occupied seats. How anyone expects to earn a livable wage at those numbers is a mystery, but I’m sure Tie Domi will be presenting his business plan any day now. And, naturally, he’ll dig into his own pocket and help bankroll the league.

Just as an FYI, here are the average attendance figures for three professional women’s leagues in 2019:
Women’s National Basketball Association: 6,535 (high: L.A. Sparks, 11,307; low N.Y. Liberty, 2,239).
National Women’s Soccer League: 7,337 (high: Portland Thorns, 20,098; low Sky Blue FC, 3,338).
National Women’s Hockey League: 954 (high: Minnesota Whitecaps, 1,200; low Connecticut Whale, 423).
I couldn’t find official head counts for the dearly departed Canadian Women’s Hockey League, but the Toronto Furies averaged about 200 patrons per game pre-Christmas 2018, and it was 500 after Santa’s annual visit.

With so many people anxious to spend the NHL’s money, I find myself wondering what Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman thinks about subsidizing a women’s league. I’d really like to know if the Winnipeg Jets co-bankroll is for or against the notion, and I wish someone in mainstream media would ask that very question.

I find it interesting that Billie Jean King has thrown her full support behind the PWHPA, but she says squat in favor of the NWHL, which actually pays its players and has a 50/50 split on merchandise sales. Is the tennis legend and social activist in favor of all female athletes getting ahead, or just the select few that ask her for photo-ops?

Tip of the bonnet to The Hockey News, which doesn’t consider the NWHL to be hockey’s evil empire and continues to cover both sides of the great divide without prejudice.

I’m fully on board with one pro women’s league, but I really wish they’d stop talking about what they “deserve,” simply because they’re the best in the world and shouldn’t have to hold down day jobs to put food on the table. Look, Kevin Koe is a world-class curler (perhaps the best), and he holds down a day job as a surface landman with Repsol Canada. “The day somebody says I’m going to quit (her or his day job), I’m going to be a full-time curler because I’m making so much money, well I don’t see it happening,” he told The Morning Cup during the recent Continental Cup event in London, Ont. “I’m not complaining, but I’m not about to quit my job…and I’ve been a pretty good curler over the last decade.” Pretty good? How about four Brier championships and two world titles worth of good? The planet’s top Pebble People spend anywhere from $150,000-$200,000 a year to compete, and they pray they break even. They receive no health benefits. They spend upwards of 200 days on the road, playing from August to May. Koe throws rocks during lunch hour so he can be home with his bride and their two daughters at night. He trains on his own time and on his own dime. The only way curlers get paid is to win, and that’s the only way they can attract sponsors. It’s the same story for 99.9 per cent of them, but I’ve yet to hear any of them talk about what they “deserve” out of life. When they believed they were getting a raw deal, they started their own league and made it work. It’s called the Grand Slam of Curling.

And, finally, some have asked why I’m still writing this blog after I vowed to shut it down. Simple: Doctors orders. I’m supposed to take two Aspirin and write in the morning.

Let’s talk about If Season in the NHL…PoMo’s seat hot or cold…the great cod kissoff for the Leafs…one final kick for Bob Cameron…oh woe are the Leos…burgers and Greens…Bianca’s pinch-me world…Justify the galloping junkie…Jen Jones still winning after all these years…and other things on my mind

Monday morning coming down in 3, 2, 1…and no ifs, and or buts about it, this is an iffy post…

It’s an untruth that there are four seasons. There are five, the fifth being the If Season.

It’s a time of unharnessed blah, blah, blah, of great optimism and of exaggerated worth, when pundits hither and yon and fore and aft squint into the autumn-colored tea leaves and see Neal Pionk not only leaping over tall buildings, but also winning the Norris Trophy as the National Hockey League’s finest defender.

Connor Hellebuyck, they’ll inform us, isn’t really as iffy a goalkeeper as last winter, and Eric Comrie has a shot at the backup job if either Hellebuyck or Laurent Brossoit fall down an elevator shaft. Bryan Little will fill that No. 2 centre slot for the Winnipeg Jets just fine, thank you, if he becomes his former 28-year-old self instead of his soon-to-be 32-year-old self. And, hey, what about that large broth of a lad Logan Stanley? He’d be a prize catch, if only he didn’t have two left feet.

If Season has already begun, in case you hadn’t noticed, with Murat Ates of The Athletic delivering a snippet that has more ifs than the Kardashians have K girls.

“If Laine and Connor sign in time for the start of the season and if a young defenceman like Pionk or (Sami) Niku has a breakout season and if Bryan Little or Adam Lowry can provide a second line centre solution and if Hellebuyck returns to the top tier of NHL goaltending, Winnipeg is a formidable team,” he writes.

Yes, and if Jacob Trouba wasn’t sweet on Kelly Tyson he’d be skating beside Josh Morrissey today.

The thing you have to remember, kids, is that these people are not experts. They’re paid to fill space and air (much of it hot) during the Jets’ month-long training exercises, but they really don’t know much more than a lot of the lumps sitting on bar stools. Or me, for that matter. I’m just not as loud, drunk and obnoxious as the lumps on bar stools. Well, okay, maybe I’m every ounce as obnoxious. Point being, the basic difference between news snoops and the rabble is this: They get to ask players, coaches, etc. dumb questions and we don’t.

Other than that, your (bad) guess is as good as theirs.

For evidence, consider their exhaustive natterings and jottings on Patrik Laine and Kyle Connor, who remain in shinny limbo. It’s mostly been pure conjecture and iffy speculation, because GMs and player agents don’t make a habit of inviting news snoops into their private tete-a-tetes, and they also clear the room of any flies they find on the wall.

So my advice is to take what the scribes scribble and talking heads say during training camp with a grain of salt.

Just to be clear, I think Murat Ates does a terrific job covering Winnipeg HC (see his excellent piece on the Andrew Copp arbitration as an e.g.), even if he has an annoying habit of letting pie charts, numbers and graphs clutter up his fine way with words. And, to be fair and for the record, he views les Jets as a “wild-card team capable of swinging wildly in either direction instead of a legitimate contender…the Jets are on the playoff bubble.” No ifs there, and I’m inclined to agree with him. A lot of the lumps likely do, too.

Murat’s revealing yarn on Copp’s experience with the NHL arbitration process is an example of what The Athletic brings to the table. It’s something you won’t see in either of the two dailies in Good Ol’ Hometown, because they’re stuck in the 20th century. And, yes, that probably reads like a sales pitch for The Athletic. So sue me.

I empathize with the boys and girls on the hockey beat. I truly do. Training camp can be a total drag. It’s long days of trying to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse, because there are a limited number of interesting storylines and, in the case of the Jets, they’ve already been exhausted. Big Buff’s taken leave. Blake Wheeler had his say. Paul Maurice went zen master about his “sparrows.” Patrik Laine and Kyle Connor are in RFA limbo. What’s left to write and talk about? Line combinations, blueline pairings and depth forwards don’t do it for me, nor does head coach Paul Maurice trying to convince us that Logan Stanley doesn’t really have two left feet. That’s not what I’d call must-read material.

There’s been some talk about the temperature of the seat Maurice is sitting on, but, again, it’s nothing but iffy yadda, yadda, yadda. As in, if les Jets soil the sheets in the early skirmishing, is Coach Potty Mouth’s job in jeopardy? Don’t even go there, because Maurice ain’t going anywhere. I don’t care if Pauly has one, five or 10 years remaining on his contract, you don’t fire the coach when the two main puppeteers, Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman and GM Kevin Cheveldayoff, hurl half of his blueline into the dumpster. And we can’t forget that Coach PottyMo has 34 goals sitting in Michigan (Kyle Connor) and another 30 in Switzerland (Patrik Laine). He can’t take the rap for that, either.

The Tranna Maple Leafs are in St. John’s for their training exercises, and a few of the boys were Screeched In on the weekend, a ritual on the Rock that includes puckering up and planting a kiss on a cod. This is noteworthy because it usually isn’t until the first-round of the Stanley Cup playoffs when the Leafs get the ol’ kiss off.

When the Winnipeg Blue Bombers salute Bob Cameron by adding his name to their Ring of Honour on Sept. 27, it will be only right if Ma Nature is in full bluster. I mean, outside of those weather whackadoos who run around chasing tornadoes, I can’t think of anyone who’s spent more time and did better work in the wind than the Acadia Rifle, so I think a robust breeze is the ticket. I don’t know how many J5Vs and Wilsons he launched into a stiff Winnipeg breeze during his 23 years with the home side, but I do know Bob kept doing it until age 48 and he only quit because numerous renovation projects needed his attention a lot more than the Bombers needed his right leg. And, from a media perspective, he was one of the great go-to guys for a usable sound bite.

If you’re interested in a retro look at punter Bob’s time kicking hither and yon in the Canadian Football League, you’ll want to check out Ed Tait’s yarn at bluebombers.com. Young Eddie’s got all the good stuff, and Cameron’s trip in the wayback machine makes for a fun read.

Terrific joust between the Saskatchewan Roughriders and Montreal Larks on Saturday. It was especially thoughtful of the CFL to let them actually play all 60 minutes this time around.

The official head count for the Bytown RedBlacks-B.C. Leos skirmish on Friday night in Vancity was 15,000 and 52 stragglers who wanted to come in from the rain, prompting this tweet from former Canadian Press scribe Jim Morris: “It’s raining outside. So far the crowd inside at BC Place could fit under one umbrella.” Ouch.

Old friend Ed Willes of Postmedia Vancity writes this of the Leos: “Whatever else they are, the Lions have been a vital part of this city’s and this province’s sporting life for 65 years. They deserve more support.” A 2-10 record says otherwise, but I’m on the same page as Willes. I was born four years before the Leos and grew up watching Willie The Wisp, Peanut Butter Joe Kapp, By Bailey, Nub Beamer, Norm Fieldgate, Sonny Homer et al, so it pains me that they’ve become an after-thought on the Left Flank. Commish Randy Ambrosie tells news snoops that there are people willing to take the Leos off bankroll David Braley’s hands, and maybe someone, or a group of someones, can create a buzz and renewed interest in the Leos. But 2-10, 15,000 fans and a $2.9 million quarterback is like trying to sell another week of rain on the Wet Coast.

Those Harvey’s commercials during CFL broadcasts make me want to run out and buy a (real meat) cheeseburger with mustard, relish, tomato and pickle, but those ads the Conservative Party has been running don’t make me want to run out and vote for Harper Lite, otherwise known as shifty-eyed mama’s boy Andrew Scheer. Mind you, I’m not keen on Trudeau Lite, either. Could be we’ll see a breakthrough for the Green Party next month. Especially if leader Elizabeth May plops a watermelon on her head. That would guarantee her the Saskatchewan vote, no? (I’m patti dawn swansson, and I approve this message).

We now return to regularly scheduled sports natter, and I must say there are many reasons to like our tennis darling Bianca Andreescu, this being one of them: When asked a question, she doesn’t read from a script. Bianca is so wide-eyed refreshing in her new, pinch-me world that everything gushing from her is totally unrehearsed and genuine. Pity if some PR hack gets hold of her and trains her in robospeak.

Kim Clijsters is returning to the women’s tennis tour at age 36, and I say good for her. Kim’s one of only three women to win a Grand Slam tournament as a mother, and she’s done it thrice. That includes a win over neighborhood bully Serena Williams, who had one of her epic temper tantrums and came completely undone in their 2009 U.S. Open semifinal. Kim’s also the only mom to reach world No. 1, so bet against her claiming another major title at your own risk.

The great galloping Justify failed a drug test prior to winning horse racing’s 2018 Triple Crown, which explains all those ‘wired’-to-wire wins.

This was one case where the winning jockey, Mike Smith, really did have to get down off his high horse.

Like everyone in sports caught cheating, Justify the Junkie’s trainer Bob Baffert has gone into denial mode. Swears on a stack of Daily Racing Forms that he never sprinkled performance enhancing oats into the champion thoroughbred’s feedbag. Must have been a contaminated hay bale, says he. So I guess authorities are now looking for a needle in a haystack. Literally.

Jen Jones, Kaitlyn Lawes, Jocelyn Peterman, Dawn McEwen.

In case you hadn’t noticed, the curling season is upon us and our Jennifer Jones has yet to lose. Jen and gal pals Kaitlyn Lawes, Jocelyn Peterman and Dawn McEwen went 7-0 to win the Shorty Jenkins Classic in Cornwall, Ont., on the weekend, and I’d say that’s serving official notice to all other female Pebble People that there’s no letup in the great skip’s game. I realize some folks are tired of seeing Jen win, but many among the rabble grew weary of Meryl Streep winning Oscars and Golden Globes every year. So deal with it.

So, unless I’m missing something, this is the blueprint for creating one viable women’s professional hockey operation: 1) The Canadian Women’s Hockey League ceases operation; 2) approximately 200 of the world’s elite players boycott the National Women’s Hockey League; 3) members of the Swedish national side refuse to play; 4) the Swedish Ice Hockey Association cancels the Four Nations Cup; 5) a group of players band together and make plans for faux exhibition matches. Ya, that’ll get the rabble rushing to the box office and earn the women a living wage. Not.

This is comical in its absurdity: Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna calls Mitch Marner “the winner by knockout or unanimous decision” in his contract throwdown with Maple Leafs GM Kyle Dubas. “The deal is done and Marner will be paid $65+ million over the next six years.” Well, okay, young Mitch wins big. Agreed. But then Simmons craps all over Marner’s dad and agent. “For his next act of magic, Dubas will make Paul Marner disappear,” he writes. Then this: “How did a star like Marner end up with a less-than-star player agent like Darren Ferris? Cut rates, I’m told.” So, Marner wins by “knockout or decision” and becomes the NHL’s highest-salary player because he listened to his dad and/or agent, but one needs to be punted and the other isn’t worthy of quality clients. Does that make sense to anyone other than Simmons?

While we’re on the subject of my favorite “D’oh!” boys in the media, Mad Mike McIntyre of the Drab Slab wrote this about the NHL’s changing contract landscape on Sept. 11: “Good luck signing a star player for the maximum team-friendly term of eight years.” Apparently Mad Mike didn’t notice that Clayton Keller signed one of those maximum team-friendly eight-year contracts on Sept. 4. And Josh Morrissey did the same on Sept. 12. Sigh.

And, finally, the official soundtrack of today’s post was provided by The Beatles and featured the classic albums Rubber Soul and Revolver, a collection of 28 tunes recorded and released when the lads were really starting to hit their creative stride. Tomorrow Never Knows is an astonishing song for the era.

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